Rising Churches 
in Non-Christian Lands 

Arthur J. Brown 



EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE 

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 



RISING CHURCHES 
IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 



N. B. — Special helps and denominational missionary literature for 
this course can be obtained by correspondence with the 
Secretary of your mission board or society. 



RISING CHURCHES IN 
NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Lectures Delivered on 

THE COLLEGE OF MISSIONS LECTURESHIP, 
INDIANAPOLIS; THE SEVERANCE LEC- 
TURESHIP, WESTERN THEOLOGICAL 
SEMINARY, PITTSBURGH 



BY 

ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN 

Author of Unity and Missions, The Foreign Missionary, The Why and Hvw 

ef Foreign Missions, New Forces in Old China, The Chinese 

Revolution, The New Era in the Philippines, The 

Nearer and Farther East (Joint Author) 



NEW YORK 

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 

1915 



:P 



^ 






Copyright, 191 ;, by 

Missionary Education Movement of the 

United States and Canada 




Mi 2 1315 

©CI. A 401201' 



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1 



TO OUR FELLOW CHRISTIANS 
IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface xi 

I The People among Whom the Churches are Rising i 

II Founding the Churches 23 

III Temptations and Difficulties of the Christian 51 

IV Character of the Christian and Resultant Character of 

the Church 75 

V Present Strength and Influence of the Church 99 

VI Self-Support and Self-Propagation 127 

VII Social Service and Self- Government 155 

VIII Relation to Missions and Western Churches 183 

Bibliography 219 

Index 227 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Christianity Versus Heathenism 14 

Rev. James Gilmour 32 

Rev. John G. Paton 32 

Rev. Robert Moffat 46 

Rev. H. H. Jessup 46 

Li Hung Chang 62 

Yuan Shi Kai 62 

Korean Women Gathered for Bible Study 80 

Korean Men Gathered for Bible Study 80 

Paul, Apostle of the Congo 96 

Rev. Majola Agbebi 96 

Group of Lepers 106 

Group of Insane 106 

Unique Missionary Offering, Elat, Africa 142 

Un Ho, the Blind Leper Girl 150 

Dr. Kerr's Hospital for the Insane 156 

Dr. Niles' School for Blind Girls 156 

Tile Factory, Malabar Coast 167 

Embroidery Works, Calcutta 167 

First Men Ordained for the Presbyterian Ministry in Korea. . . 178 

Rev. K. C. Chatterjee 184 

Rev. Ding Li Mei 184 

Chinese Workers in City Evangelization 188 

Ordained Zulu Pastors 188 

University of Nanking, Seven Denominations Cooperating 

Science Building 194 

Faculty of Language School 194 

Student Volunteers for Home Missions 

Shantung Christian University 210 

University of Nanking 210 



PREFACE 

The rise of Christian Churches in non-Christian lands 
is the most inspiring fact of the present age, but the 
problems to which it gives rise are among the most 
difficult that the Christian student has to solve. They 
vitally affect the conditions under which mission work 
must now be conducted and involve extensive readjust- 
ments in our attitude and methods. We of the West 
should carefully study these rising Churches in order 
that we may aid them effectively, guide them wisely, 
avoid harmful policies, and cooperate harmoniously 
with them as they develop independent power. Avail- 
able material for this study is limited, as the problem 
has recently emerged. During the pioneer period, 
when converts were few in number, widely scattered, 
and with no leaders of their own, the problems of the 
Church were comparatively simple. Now, by the bless- 
ing of God upon missionary work, numerous churches 
have been developed. Christians of the second and 
third generations represent increasing stability. Ca- 
pable leaders are appearing, and others are being 
trained in mission schools. The churches are becoming 
conscious of unity and power. 

To what extent do our methods recognize these 
facts? What is the character of our fellow Christian 
in those lands, and what are his temptations and diffi- 
culties? Where the independence of the churches 

xi 



xii PREFACE 

should be recognized, what should be our relation to 
it? What progress are they making in self-support? 
To what extent do they realize their responsibility to 
propagate the gospel among their countrymen and to 
promote the kingdom of God by social service? How r 
can the people of God in the home lands most effectively 
cooperate with their brethren in non-Christian lands 
for the furtherance of the gospel of our common Lord? 
These are some of the questions which call for our 
thoughtful and prayerful consideration, and whose 
reflex influence upon the churches in Europe and 
x\merica will be far-reaching. 

President James G. K. McClure, of Chicago, on 
hearing that this volume was in preparation, wrote: 
"I want you to know that I realize the tremendousness 
of your task, that you are breaking a path into the 
midst of the greatest problems Christianity has ever 
faced and that I am eager you should state things in 
a large way — in the same generous, encouraging, de- 
veloping, welcoming way that Christ would use in deal- 
ing with the people and communities that are involved." 
I dare not cherish the hope that I have succeeded in 
meeting this high test. I write, not as a teacher, but 
rather as a student who deeply feels the importance of 
the subject and who ventures to indicate some aspects 
of a problem which still is far from adequate interpre- 
tation. 

The proposed use of this volume as a text-book for 
mission study classes has limited its length and short- 
ened the reference to some phases of the subject which, 



PREFACE xiii 

while important to ecclesiastical scholars and mission- 
ary administrators, are not of general interest. 

Arthur Judson Brown 

156 Fifth Avenue, New York 
April 16, 1915 



THE PEOPLES AMONG WHOM THE 
CHURCHES ARE RISING 

Power for the New Life 

An Unnoticed Movement. The most significant 
movement in non-Christian lands is attracting scant 
attention from a preoccupied world. Politicians and 
generals, poets and scientists, the devotees of fashion 
and amusement, give little heed to the small groups of 
Asiatics and Africans who worship the crucified 
Nazarene. "No more did the statesmen and the phi- 
losophers of Rome understand the character and issues 
of that greatest movement of all history, of which their 
literature takes so little notice. That the greatest relig- 
ious change in the history of mankind should have 
taken place under the eyes of a brilliant galaxy of 
philosophers and historians, and that they should have 
treated as simply contemptible an agency which all 
men must now admit to have been, for good or evil, 
the most powerful moral lever that has ever been ap- 
plied to the affairs of men, are facts well worthy of 
meditation in every period of religious transition." * 

This movement is being reproduced in our day in 
lands of which the early disciples had never heard. 
Hujnble but earnest men and women are hearing the 

*Lecky, History of European Morals, Vol. I, 359. 

x 



2 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the 
people. The scenes so graphically described in the 
New Testament are being reenacted on a wider scale 
throughout the mission field of the twentieth century. 

Non-Christian Peoples Misjudged. Our first inter- 
est naturally centers upon the peoples of the non-Chris- 
tian world who form the material from which the 
membership of the Church is to be fashioned. Is that 
material capable of transformation by the gospel? 
Wrong ideas on the subject were almost universal until 
recent years, many even in the home churches holding 
that "the heathen" were not undeveloped races but "the 
rotten product of decayed civilizations" with which 
nothing worth while could be done. Juster ideas are 
beginning to prevail; but multitudes in America still 
have a subconscious feeling that missionary work is 
a condescension to lower orders of humanity. This 
feeling has been strengthened by superficial travelers 
who judge by western standards and condemn peoples 
who fall short. 

But let us be reasonable. How can we expect men 
of non-Christian races to be honest and humane under 
conditions which have long fostered dishonesty and 
inhumanity, to be chaste when unchastity is sanctioned 
by general custom, and to exemplify Christian char- 
acter without Christian knowledge? It is hard enough 
for us to keep straight with the help of all the incen- 
tives of Christian teaching and association. When we 
consider the absence of these incentives in non-Chris- 
tian lands, the wonder is that people show as good 



THE PEOPLES 3 

qualities as they do. It took Anglo-Saxons many cen- 
turies under the tutelage of Christianity to reach their 
present stage, and they are still far from perfect. Shall 
we condemn non-Christians because they have not ac- 
quired in less than a century without such tutelage 
w r hat we but imperfectly exemplify? 

Our Barbaric Forebears. It is easy to criticize 
people who differ from us, forgetting that the differ- 
ences may be largely due to the lack of advantages 
which we have had and which we can communicate to 
them. Pessimistic prophecies are based upon past con- 
ditions and fail to take into account the regenerating 
forces which Christianity is now bringing into play. 
The qualities that have given preeminence to the white 
man did not characterize him when he was found by 
the missionaries. of the early Church. They have been 
bred into him by centuries of Christian teaching. Most 
of the non-Christian nations are considerably higher 
in the scale of civilization and achievement than Europe 
was in the days of St. Paul. The Teuton in the time 
of Julius Caesar was far more barbarous than the 
Chinese and the East Indian of to-day. Augustine of 
Canterbury found no such orderly society in England 
as Morrison found in China. As late as 1678 the 
Highlanders of Scotland were "a barbarous, savage 
people accustomed to rapine and spoil." * Boniface 
labored in Germany among more lawless tribes than 
Carey met in India. Patrick preached in Ireland when 
the Irish were as savage as the present Kurds of the 

Quoted in Henderson and Watt, Scotland of To-day, 16. 



4 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Turkish mountains. "Look unto the rock whence ye 
were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were 
digged." * Christianity may do as much for other races 
as it has done for ours. There are excellent qualities 
in the people of every field. 

If we may adapt the words of Carlyle in his Essay 
on Burns : "Wherever there is a sky above and a world 
around, ... is man's existence, with its infinite 
longings and small acquirings ; its ever-thwarted, ever- 
renewed endeavors; its unspeakable aspirations; its 
fears and hopes that wander through eternity. . . . 
The mysterious workmanship of man's heart, the true 
light and the inscrutable darkness of man's destiny, 
reveal themselves not only in capital cities and crowded 
saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men have 
their abode. ... A Scottish peasant's life was the 
meanest and rudest of all lives till Burns became a poet 
in it, and a poet of it; found it a man's life and there- 
fore significant to men." 

Uplifting Forces Required. Many think of non- 
Christian peoples as a mass, as they would think of vast 
herds of cattle or shoals of fish. Why not think of 
them as individuals, as men of like passions with our- 
selves? A human being who has never heard of Christ 
is after all a human being. He has the same hopes and 
fears, the same temptations and sorrows, the same 
capacity for happiness. Are we not told that God 
"hath made of one every nation of men"? We 
complacently imagine that we are a higher order of 

^sa. li. i. 



THE PEOPLES & 

beings. But what constitutes superiority of race? 
Benjamin Kidd declares that "we shall have to set 
aside many of our old ideas on the subject. Neither in 
respect alone of color, nor of descent, nor even of the 
possession of high intellectual capacity, can science 
give us any warrant for speaking of one race as 
superior to another.' ' High character is the result, 
not so much of anything inherent in one race as dis- 
tinguished from another, as of the operation upon a 
race of certain uplifting forces. Any preeminence 
that we now possess is due to the action of these forces. 
But they can be brought to bear upon other races as 
well as upon us. We should avoid the popular mis- 
take of looking at men of different races "as if they 
were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the 
great soul in a man's face." * 

We need in this study a true idea of the worth and 
dignity of man as man, a realization that under brown, 
black, and yellow skins are all the faculties and possi- 
bilities of human souls, to grasp the great thought that 
these are our brother men, made like ourselves in the 
image of God. Let us have the charity that sees be- 
neath external peculiarities our common humanity, 
which leads us to respect a man because he is a man; 
■which, no matter what his complexion or country, no 
matter to what degradation he has fallen, will take 
him by the hand and lead him to a higher plane. We 
need an enthusiasm for humanity which shall not be 
sentimental rhetoric, but a catholic love for one who is 

George Eliot. 



6 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

"Heir of the same inheritance, 
Child of the self-same God; 
He hath but stumbled in the path 
We have in weakness trod." 

Ruskin reminds us that the filthy mud in the street 
is composed of clay, sand, soot, and water; that the 
clay may be purified into the radiance of the sapphire ; 
that the sand may be developed into the beauty of the 
opal; that the soot may be crystallized into the glory 
of the diamond, and that the water may be changed 
into a star of snow. So man in Asia as well as in 
America may, by the transforming power of the Spirit 
of God, be ennobled into the dignity of divine sonship. 
We shall get along best with the non-Christian if we 
remember that he is not a different species and that he 
differs from us, not in the fundamental things that 
make for manhood, but only in the superficial things 
that are the result of environment. From this view- 
point, we can say with Shakespeare: 

"There is some sort of goodness in things evil, 
Would men observingly distil it out." 

A Discarded Word. I put the word "heathen" in 
quotation marks because I think it should be aban- 
doned; not because its original meaning is less true, 
but because popular usage has added an element of 
contempt which has made it not only inappropriate but 
highly offensive to intelligent Asiatics, and therefore 
a hindrance to our Christian approach to them. Those 
who still cling to the contemptuous idea may profit- 
ably recall that when the misanthropic Scrooge, in 



THE PEOPLES 7 

Dickens's Christmas Carol, says of the poor and suf- 
fering: "If he be like to die, he had better do it and 
decrease the surplus population/' the Ghost sternly re- 
plies : "Man, if man you be at heart, not adamant, for- 
bear that wicked cant until you have discovered what 
the surplus is and where it is, Will you decide what 
men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in 
the sight of heaven, you are the most worthless, and 
less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child." 

Typical Peoples 

Chinese. Consider some of the typical peoples of 
the non-Christian world. The Chinese will probably 
be deemed the most conspicuous example. I need not 
repeat here what I have written regarding them in two 
other books. 1 Their industry, their persistence, their 
genius for scholarship and business, and the remark- 
able skill and energy with which they carried through 
a gigantic political revolution have challenged the re- 
spect of mankind. They are coming to the front in 
many lines of activity. Chinese students take high 
honors in our proudest American universities. Sir 
David Barbour of Great Britain, at a monetary con- 
ference of world experts on finance, declared that "the 
representative of China in this conference, Dr. Chen, 
is distinctively a younger man than any of us, but 
when it comes to ability or knowledge of the subject, 
he is the peer of us all." 

The Hon. John W. Foster, formerly American 

x New Forces in Old China and The Chinese Revolution. 



8 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Secretary of State, expresses the opinion, in his Intro- 
duction to the Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, that the 
last one hundred years have produced many men of 
scholarship, several great generals, a number of 
statesmen of distinguished ability and success, and a 
few diplomats of high rank; but that no one of these 
can be singled out as having combined in his person 
all these attainments in such an eminent degree as Li 
Hung-chang. His successor in the Vice-royalty of 
Chihli and now the President of the Republic, Yuan 
Shih-kai, is everywhere conceded to be one of the most 
masterful men of the present world generation — a born 
leader of men. 

Japanese. The Japanese were regarded fifty years 
ago as an obscure and weak "heathen" nation. They 
certainly are not obscure to-day, and if one regards 
them as weak he can secure some heartfelt information 
by inquiring of Russians. I need not enlarge upon the 
characteristics of a people that are probably better 
known to western nations than any other of the peoples 
of the non-Christian world. We all recognize their 
progressive spirit, their civil and military efficiency, the 
marvelous skill with which they are adapting them- 
selves to the conditions of the new era, passing, almost 
in a single generation, from the period of antiquity to 
the period of modern life. Vices they undoubtedly 
have ; so have we ; but they are a virile, energetic, and 
ambitious people, a recognized power in the far East, 
and a factor in international relationships which is not 
ignored in the cabinets of Europe and America. 



THE PEOPLES 9 

East Indians. Are the peoples of India uncivilized ? 
India had a voluminous written literature and had 
studied the heavens accurately enough to calculate the 
solar year 2,000 B. C. : had worked out a science of 
mathematics, a scheme of philosophy, and an art of 
music with its seven notes 500 B. C. ; and had written 
a Sanskrit grammar, still used by scholars, 350 B. C. 
When America was a wilderness and the Pilgrim 
Fathers were beginning their struggle to subdue it, the 
Emperor Shah-Jehan (reigned 1628-1658) built the 
magnificent Palace-Fort at Delhi with its wonderful 
Pearl Mosque and its Audience Hall with the Peacock 
Throne, adorned with emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and 
diamonds which the jeweler Tavernier valued at $35,- 
000,000; and when his favorite wife died, he toiled 
seventeen years with twenty thousand workmen at a 
cost of ten million dollars to build her tomb, a tomb 
before which the artists and architects of the twentieth 
century stand in wonder, delight, and awe, a dream in 
marble and precious stones, the most beautiful struc- 
ture the world has ever seen— the glorious Taj Mahal. 
That the East Indians of the twentieth century are not 
degenerate descendants of nobler days many a mis- 
sionary and British civil service administrator can 
testify. There are thousands of intelligent, cultivated 
gentlemen in India. Schools and universities are 
crowded with bright pupils, and the Nobel Prize for 
Literature for 19 13 was bestowed upon Rabindranath 
Tagore, a Hindu poet of Bengal. 

Of the lower classes Sir Andrew H. L. Fraser, who 



10 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

spent a generation in India, writes: "It is not difficult 
to win the hearts of these kindly, simple people: they 
have a wonderful way of winning ours. It is worth 
while to get among them and help them to mitigate 
their sorrows or increase their happiness. . . • To 
me it was always a touching spectacle to see a band of 
pilgrims on their way to Jaganath's temple at Puri. 
They were going to fulfil some vow, to give thanks 
for some special blessing. They would come some- 
times, nearly a whole village together, for hundreds of 
miles with their bullocks and carts and their families 
and go singing down the road the praises of their 
god. They had looked forward to this pious journey 
for years and expected much blessing from it. Often 
they would return weary and well-nigh stripped of all 
they had by the rapacious priests and temple servants. 
Often some of them fell victims to cholera and other 
ills incident to pilgrim life in India. Sometimes they 
had not even obtained a satisfactory view of the 
strangely unlovely idol they had gone to see. But 
they were going back to their old life, loyal and patient 
as ever, not understanding why things had not been 
made brighter for them, but not complaining. In much 
of their life we cannot help these people; but we can 
at least sympathize with them, and we can hardly help 
loving them when we know them well." * 

Koreans. The Koreans appear, at first glance, to 
be most unpromising material. They lack the energy, 
initiative, and ambition of the Japanese, and the 

1 Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, 182, 183. 



THE PEOPLES 11 

thrift, industry, and strength of the Chinese. The 
visitor usually enters from Japan, and the contrast is 
painful. The villages are a squalid collection of mush- 
room hovels. The streets are crooked alleys and 
choked with filth, except where the Japanese have en- 
forced a semblance of cleanliness. Some travelers have 
accepted this first impression as final. 

Two visits to Korea and long relationship to mis- 
sionary work there have given me a different opinion. 
The upper classes are as a rule degenerate, but the 
common people are robust. Their courage is high, as 
they have repeatedly shown, though lack of organiza- 
tion, competent leadership, and the weapons and meth- 
ods of modern warfare make them helpless as a nation. 
Mentally they develop quickly under education. 
Korean children are remarkably bright scholars. 

During a journey through the interior we passed 
through scores of villages far from the beaten track of 
travel, ate in native huts and slept in native inns, with 
our luggage piled in the open courtyard. The people 
were inquisitive, following us through the streets, 
crowding about us at every stop, and peering through 
every door and crevice. But not once was insolence 
shown, and not a penny's worth was stolen. Every- 
where we were treated respectfully and with genuine 
hospitality. The best that a village afforded was placed 
at our disposal, and, while prices were never excessive, 
the people often refused to receive any payment. We 
usually sent word ahead, so that accommodations might 
be ready for us ; and whenever we did so, groups would 



12 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

walk out several miles to meet us, sometimes in a heavy 
rain. The customary salutation was a smiling inquiry : 
"Have you come in peace?" and when we left, the 
people escorted us some distance on our way, and then 
courteously bade us good-by in the words : "May you 
go in peace!" These were usually Christians, but 
we saw multitudes who were not, and while they were 
more unkempt than the Christians, they, too, were 
invariably kind and respectful. He must be a callous 
man who could not love such a people and long to help 
them to higher levels of thought and life. 

Siamese. The Siamese are not deemed one of the 
strong peoples of Asia, but Siamese students abroad 
have no difficulty in maintaining equality with for- 
eigners in the classroom. When they first went to the 
famous Harrow School in England, the head master 
said to Mr. Verney : "You are trying an extraordinary 
experiment in sending young Siamese to Harrow, and 
you are wonderfully sanguine in supposing that they 
can adapt themselves to our public school life;" but 
shortly before his death, he spoke of the remarkable 
success they had achieved and said that there was not 
a master at Harrow who would not gladly welcome 
them to his house. 

Turks. The Turks are often spoken of as the least 
responsive of all the peoples to the influences that make 
for character. But whatever corruption there may be 
among the official and wealthy classes, the Turkish 
peasant is a brave, hardy man, and, though he may be 
roused to fanatical fury, he is ordinarily peaceable. 



THE PEOPLES 13 

industrious, and hospitable. Children of upper and 
lower classes alike, when trained in mission schools, 
often develop wonderfully. The Rev. Charles R. Wat- 
son says that he met "a figure in Turkish costume, 
which covers the entire head and face and comes down 
just over the shoulders — a thick impenetrable veil. . . . 
The exclamation is forced to one's lips : 'Here is the 
unchangeable Orient with its stamp of degradation 
upon womanhood !' Then we step into a mission build- 
ing. The missionary introduces us to this young wom- 
an. She throws back her veil. What do we see? 
Beautiful brown eyes! Beautiful tresses of brown 
hair! A voice that is clear and musical. She is the 
author of several books; and in the recent war she 
gathered a few women of kindred spirit about her and 
went to the front to minister to the sick and wounded. 
She may not call herself a Christian, but you would 
not call her a Moslem. She has attended the American 
Girls' College at Constantinople, and the spirit of Chris- 
tianity has been breathed into her soul. One goes his 
way after such an experience wondering whether be- 
neath other impenetrable veils there may not be others 
like Halideh Hanem." 

Filipinos. A visit to the Philippines impressed me 
with the attractiveness of the Filipinos. Among de- 
lightful memories are receptions at Iloilo, Dumaguete, 
and Manila, where hundreds of well-dressed, pleasant- 
faced people welcomed us with a grace far removed 
from barbarism. A Filipino residence in which a 
social function was held had spacious drawing-rooms, 



14 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

lofty ceilings, and rich furniture. The top of the din- 
ing-room table was a single slab of beautiful marble, 
six feet in width and twenty-two feet in length. The 
floors were of polished native woods, and the doors 
and other woodwork were of solid mahogany. The 
wild tribes of the interior mountains are indeed sav- 
ages. Some of them are head-hunters, and all are con- 
siderably lower in the scale of civilization than the 
people in the larger towns and along the coast. But 
the Hon. Dean C. Worcester assured me that they are 
responsive to kindness, and that, ignorant and degraded 
as they are, they might be raised by wise and patient 
effort to a much higher level of life. Let us give them 
a chance, some decades of fair treatment, of just laws, 
of modern political and educational methods, and of a 
pure Protestant faith, and I believe that they will 
justify the hopes of their well-wishers rather than the 
sneers of their detractors. Said Senor Felipe Buen- 
camino: 'The heart of the Filipino is like his fertile 
soil, and it will as surely repay cultivation. Sow love 
and you will reap love. Sow hatred and hatred will 
grow/' 

Africans. Africans are considered as types of the 
lowest races. But the Rev. George L. Mackay, of 
Formosa, told a Canadian audience that, "after hav- 
ing gone around the globe once and being now half 
way round again, I declare that some of the best men 
I ever met were black-faced, thick-lipped, and w r oolly- 
headed Negroes." Of the raw tribes of the west coast 
Miss Mary Kingsley wrote, after careful observation : 



THE PEOPLES 15 

"These Africans have often a remarkable mental acute- 
ness and a large share of common sense. I confess I 
like the African on the whole, a thing I never expected 
to do when I went to the coast with the idea that he 
was a degraded, savage, cruel brute." * When a great 
congregation saw the body of David Livingstone laid 
to rest in historic Westminster Abbey, none in that dis- 
tinguished throng were regarded with greater respect 
than the black men who had faithfully borne the sacred 
form on their shoulders through forests and rivers, 
across plains and over mountains, in toil and hunger 
and weariness, in danger of savage beasts and still 
more savage men, until they had delivered their sacred 
charge to their white brothers in England. 

Burmans. Say the worst, if one will, about any 
people. The Burman, for example, is among the hard- 
est of men to influence with the Christian message. 
He is haughty, cruel, fond of theatricals and gaudily- 
colored garments. He regards work as beneath him. 
His Buddhistic teaching against the taking of life does 
not trouble him in the least, for, he argues, he does not 
kill the fish he eats: they merely die when he takes 
them out of the water. He "dries" them on mats in 
the sun, pounds them to a paste, adds a little salt, drains 
off the oil, spreads the paste on his rice, and eats it 
with keen relish. We shall never forget the odor of 
those decaying fish. In spite of his laziness, his poverty, 
his shiftlessness, and the ease with which a handful of 
white men have defeated him in war and a few thou- 

x Travels in West Africa, 439, 653. 



16 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

sand Chinese have made themselves masters of his 
trade, he is One of the most self-satisfied of mortals, 
proudly regarding himself as superior to all other races. 
He smokes his cigaret, chews his betel, eats his "fra- 
grant" fish, lounges in his bamboo hut, and is calmly 
indifferent to the rest of the world ! 

Let us be careful in our judgment, however. These 
people are not the only conceited ones on earth. There 
are some in America. Nor do we have to travel half- 
way around the world to find the indolent and the care- 
less. Burmese women are notably strong and capable. 
They are not secluded like the women of India. They 
freely mingle with men and usually attend to the busi- 
ness matters of the family. Drunkenness and opium 
smoking among all classes are not so common as the 
former is in England and the latter in China ; but, un- 
fortunately, both are increasing under the influence of 
the European in one case and the Chinese in the other. 
Most foreigners in Asia and Africa, outside of the 
missionary circle, drink heavily and the native soon 
learns to imitate them. The Burman has qualities 
which, when developed by the gospel, make him a 
strong man. 

Elements of Hope 

The Human Quality. Everywhere, even in the most 
unlooked-for places, one finds the human quality. I 
noticed a woman in an Asiatic hamlet. Her garments 
were cheap and coarse. Her hands were roughened 
by toil. Her features were heavy, her eyes dull. She 



THE PEOPLES 17 

was evidently a common, ignorant peasant. A sleeping 
baby beside her wakened and began to fret. The 
woman took the child in her arms and, indifferent to 
onlookers, gave the little one her breast. As the babe 
nestled against her bosom and contentedly began to 
nurse, the hard lines in the mother's face softened. 
The dull eyes grew softly bright. The countenence 
was suffused with tenderness. And lo! I saw the 
transfiguration of womanhood. 

Our train stopped twenty minutes at an interior 
station in Japan. We strolled up and down the long 
platform. It ran beside and a little above a row of 
humble dwellings. The weather was warm and doors 
were open. It was evening, and the lighted interiors 
were clearly visible. A woman was preparing a simple 
meal. The husband and father, apparently a laborer, 
came wearily in from his daily toil. A child joyfully 
ran to meet him. He caught the little fellow in his 
arms, tossed him on his shoulder, crouched on the 
floor while the boy gleefully climbed upon his back — 
father and son laughing as they romped together, while 
the mother looked up from her work with joy and 
pride. It was plainly the home of poverty, but as 
plainly the home of affection and happiness. And 
we, who could not but see, thought of the dear ones 
far away and felt that we were kin to the Japanese 
toiler who loved his lowly home and ihis little child. 

Christian Dynamic Needed. We would not give 
an exaggerated idea of non-Christian peoples. Multi- 
tudes are stolid and ignorant. The defects and 



18 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

vices which characterize parts of the populations of 
Europe and America characterize a far larger pro- 
portion of the populations of Asia and Africa. Lying, 
gambling, stealing, immorality, official corruption, 
although by no means universal, are so general as to 
form racial traits. Some professed Christians are not 
good men; but the normal expectation is that the 
average Christian is a man of personal purity and 
integrity, and if public opinion learns that he is not, 
it condemns him. Some Hindus, Buddhists, and Mos- 
lems are men of personal purity and integrity; but 
the normal expectation is that the average man of 
these faiths is not, and public opinion accepts this as 
a matter of course. The first chapter of St. Paul's 
Epistle to the Romans is still an accurate description 
of the vices of the non-Christian world. 

But the difference, we reiterate, between Asia and 
America is due to moral teaching, not to inferiority 
in type. It proves that "the heathen" have the failings 
of our common humanity wherever Christian influ- 
ences have not transformed it. The typical Chinese 
or Persian, from the view-point of character, is the 
same kind of a person as the typical white man was 
before Christianity changed him. While some un- 
converted white men have been so molded by a Chris- 
tian environment that their lives are exceptional, every 
city in Great Britain and the United States contains 
elements that are as wicked and degraded as one can 
find in the cities of Japan and China. Men who 
reject an offered Christ, who know the better and 



THE PEOPLES 19 

choose the worse, are beneath the level of earnest- 
minded pagans who have never heard of Christ and 
who if they had heard of him, might have accepted 
him. 

It is a mistake to talk about the sins of the non- 
Christian world as if they were peculiar to it. The 
sins of Mekka and Lassa and Yunnanfu are precisely 
the same as the sins of Glasgow, Montreal, and Phila- 
delphia. The essential difference in these two groups 
of cities lies in the fact that one group has a powerful 
counteracting force in a strong and long-established 
Christian Church, while the other has no such coun- 
teracting force. Indiscriminate condemnation of non- 
Christian peoples is therefore unjust. We send 
missionaries to them, not as saints to sinners or as 
superiors to inferiors, but as men to their fellow men 
who share our common need of divine help. "For 
right judgment of any man/ 5 said Carlyle, "it is 
useful, nay essential, to see his good qualities before 
pronouncing on his bad." The bad qualities are due 
to sin, and sin, like smallpox, is a world disease. Those 
who have learned to prevent its ravages are under at 
least as heavy a moral obligation to disseminate the 
remedy as physicians were to disseminate the knowl- 
edge of vaccination and treatment. 

Crushing Toil and Wretchedness. The pathos of 
life in non-Christian lands is great. The prevailing 
wretchedness appalls an American who goes back into 
the unmodified conditions of the interior or even into 
the old proud Chinese city of Shanghai. As I jour- 



20 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

neyed through vast throngs, climbed hilltops, and 
looked out upon the innumerable villages which thickly 
dotted the plains as far as the eye could reach, as I 
saw the unrelieved pain, the crushing poverty, and 
the abject fear of evil spirits, I felt that in China is 
seen in literal truth "The Man with the Hoe." 

"Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back the burden of the world." 

"In certain occupations in China men are literally 
killing themselves by their exertions. The term of a 
chair-bearer is eight years, or a ricksha runner four 
years; for the rest of his life he is an invalid, A 
physician in Fukien, who had examined some scores of 
carrying-coolies, told me she found but two who were 
free from the heart trouble caused by burden-bearing. 
In Canton even the careless eye marks in the porters 
that throng the streets the plain signs of overstrain; 
faces pale and haggard, with the drawn and flat look 
of utter exhaustion; eyes pain-pinched, or astare and 
seeing only with supreme effort; jaw sagging and 
mouth open from weariness. The dog-trot, the whis- 
tling breath, the clenched teeth, the streaming face of 
those under a burden of one or two hundredweight 
that must be borne are as eloquent of ebbing life as 
a jetting artery. In a few years, the face becomes 
a wrinkled, pain-stiffened mask, the veins of the upper 
leg stand out like great cords, a frightful net of 
varicose veins blemishes the calf, lumps appear at the 



THE PEOPLES 21 

back of the neck or down the spine, and the shoulders 
are covered with thick pads of callous under a livid 
skin." * 

Compassionate View. These people are not a dis- 
tinct species, but human beings meeting our common 
temptations, bearing our common burdens, needing 
our common knowledge of God in Christ, and forming 
the material out of which divine grace is fashioning 
a regenerated Church. Let us view them in the spirit 
of Catherine of Sienna, who "asked and received of 
God the gift of seeing the possible loveliness of hu- 
manity even in its ruins — the statue in the marble." 

We shall be helped in doing this if we consider the 
attitude of Jesus toward men. He was profoundly 
impressed by the pathos of human life. He knew its 
joys and could rejoice with people in their happier 
hours, as he did at the marriage in Cana of Galilee; 
but he felt the deep undertone of human life — its 
poverty, its anxiety, its sickness, and its yearning for 
something better. 

Matthew says that when the Son of man "saw 
the multitudes, he was moved with compassion." 
Compassion! compatio, literally to suffer with an- 
other; so that we might freely translate: When he 
saw the weary, heavy-laden multitudes, he was so 
deeply moved that he suffered with them, "because 
they were distressed and scattered as sheep not having 
a shepherd." Another rendering conveys the idea 
that the sheep had wandered away from the fold, had 

X E. A. Ross, The Changing Chinese, 84, 85. 



22 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

been attacked by wolves until they were torn and 
bleeding, and that there was no shepherd to defend 
them. 1 A vivid picture this of the non-Christian 
world; men, women, and children wandering in a 
wilderness of sin and sorrow, groping blindly in pain 
and uncertainty, exposed to grievous temptations 
which may well be personified by wolves. It is a torn 
and bleeding humanity. And as Jesus sees, he 
"suffers." If he charged his disciples to go with tender 
ministries to the comparatively small number of suf- 
fering people whom they knew, how much more 
solemnly imperative is his summons to us to minister 
in his name to the far vaster hosts that are now 
accessible? Many of them are waiting in anxious 
expectation for a message of deliverance, and we shall 
see, as we proceed with this book, how they receive 
the good tidings of the gospel with eagerness of heart 
and great joy. In the noble words of Whittier: 

"Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, 
The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir; 



t> X 



'Matt. ix. 36. 2 "Among the Hills." 



II 

FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 

Founding the Church. The main object of the for- 
eign missionary enterprise is to establish the Church 1 
in each non-Christian land. At this point or in this 

^he term church is used rather indiscriminately, in popular 
usage, for a religious service, a dedicated building, a congrega- 
tion, a denomination, a body sacramentally denned, and the whole 
number of believers in a given country or in the world. This book 
is not intended to be a treatise on controverted points of church 
organization, but a practical study of believers in non-Christian 
lands who have accepted Christ as Savior and Lord and who 
have banded themselves together for the worship of God, for 
observance of the sacraments, for mutual helpfulness, and for the 
outreaching work of the Church in the world. Such an applica- 
tion of the word is not scientifically adequate nor ecclesiastically 
satisfactory, but it may serve our present need. We are to 
consider young Churches that have not had time to assume 
permanent form, and that have been established by missionaries 
of many different communions amid conditions which compelled 
the adoption of some temporary methods. We must use the 
term Church somewhat loosely as indicating the various forms 
in which the body of Christ is beginning to manifest itself in 
the non-Christian world, however imperfectly constituted they 
may be at this time. Further reference to the subject is made 
in chapter XVII of the author's volume entitled Unity and Mis- 
sions. If the reader wishes to look up the Bible use of the word, 
he will find a variety of references, such as: "the ecclesia" or 
the "called out" (Matt. xvi. 18), the "flock" (John x. 16; Acts 
xx. 28; 1 Peter v. 2), "the branch" (John xv. 5), "the household 
of the faith" and "of God" (Gal. vi. 10; Eph. ii. 19, 20), "a 
spiritual house" (1 Peter ii. 5), "God's building" (1 Cor. iii. 9-1 1), 

23 



24 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

respect foreign missionary work differs from the work 
of the churches at home. Our task is to give the gospel 
to every man, woman, and child in our own country. 
As new generations are continually coming on, as con- 
verts are to be trained for Christian life and service, 
and as many applications of Christianity to society are 
involved, the work of the Church at home will never be 
completed. In the foreign field, it is our task to found 
the Church, and then to induce it to assume those duties 
for the further evangelization of the population that we 
have assumed for our own people. Christians in 
Canada and the United States must support their own 
ministers, build every church edifice, erect and equip 
every school and hospital, conduct every form of allied 
service for the poor, dependent, and defective classes, 
and carry through every social reform. It would be 
impossible for us to do this for the billion people of the 
non-Christian world, and the foreign missionary enter- 
prise does not contemplate such an undertaking. We 
are to start the Church, show it how to do its work, and 
turn over responsibility to it as fast as it is able to 
receive it. This ultimate aim should be kept steadily in 
view and should influence all missionary methods and 
activities. Otherwise, exceptional cases may drift us 
into policies which will harm rather than help. If the 
Church is not established, the toil of the missionary 
will result only in detached individuals who will not 



"the bride" (Rev. xxi. 9), "the body" of Christ (Col. i. 18, 24; 
Eph. i. 22, 23), "the church of the living God, the pillar and 
ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii. 15), etc. 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 25 

attain maturity of faith and character and who will 
neither perpetuate themselves nor exert decisive in- 
fluence upon the world. No nation will ever become 
Christian until it has a firmly established Church of 
its own. "God's great agent for the spread of his king- 
dom is the Church. In every land he operates through 
the Church, and missions exist distinctly for the 
Church. They have both their source and their aim in 
that. They are the reproductive faculty of the parent 
Church, the constituting agency of the infant Church. 
Every Church should work out into a mission; every 
mission should work out into a Church." * We shall 
discuss in a later chapter the implications of this prin- 
ciple. 

The conditions amid which the Church had to be 
founded in the mission field must be borne in mind if 
we are rightly to estimate the magnitude of the under- 
taking. These conditions were even more difficult than 
those which confronted St. Paul in the first century of 
the Christian era. 

Contrast with Paul. Some critics of modern mis- 
sions are fond of comparing the modern missionary 
with St. Paul. They imagine that something is wrong 
because he appears to be less successful. Such critics 
overlook the fact that St. Paul was not a foreign mis- 
sionary at all, as that term is now used. By birth, by 
language, by citizenship, by ways of thinking, and by 
manners and customs, Paul was of the same nation as 
the people to whom he preached. It is true that he was 

Edward A. Lawrence, Modern Missions in the East, 31. 



26 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

a Jew whose chief ministry was to Gentiles ; but Judea 
was then an integral part of the Roman Empire, and 
Paul openly proclaimed that he was a Roman citizen. 1 
The population of the United States is a conglomerate 
of Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, 
and various other nationalities; but would any one 
contend that Theodore Roosevelt is not an American 
because his ancestry was Dutch, or that Francis L. 
Patton is foreign to a New York congregation because 
he was born in Bermuda and has never been naturalized 
in the United States? Paul was a Roman citizen 
preaching to the peoples of his own country. In other 
words, from the view-point of our missionary termi- 
nology, he was a native minister rather than a foreign 
missionary. Unlike the modern missionary, he did 
not go to the people of his generation as an alien. He 
did not have to spend years in learning their language 
or to struggle all through his ministry with difficulties 
of accent and idiom. His influence was not crippled 
by inability to understand the view-point of his hear- 
ers. He knew them, not as an American knows 
Asiatics, but as an Asiatic knows Asiatics. Nor was 
Paul unable to live on the scale of the people of the 
country in which he worked; wherever he went he 
could live as a native and preach without salary because 
he was in his own country and able to support himself 
by working at his trade as a tent-maker. 

In all of these particulars, the twentieth century mis- 
sionary is seriously handicapped in ways from which 

^cts xxii. 27. 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 27 

Paul was either wholly or largely free. The white 
man in Asia is an alien, an exotic, transplanted there 
at great expense, maintained with difficulty, obliged 
to have many things that the native minister does not 
require, forced to economize on a salary of $1,200, 
where a native clergyman lives comfortably on $150, 
and living, thinking, and speaking on a plane so widely 
different from that of the people that the chasm be- 
tween them can be seldom bridged. 

The contention that Paul found a prepared people 
among the Jews cannot indeed be pressed very far, 
for most of the Jews rejected his teachings and the 
Gentile races were substantially in the same moral and 
intellectual state as the Asiatics of to-day. Making 
all due allowance for this, however, the general fact 
remains that the Old Testament teaching of one true 
God and the coming of a Messiah had been carried by 
the Jews of the dispersion to every part of the known 
world, and that the synagogue offered a convenient 
place for the proclamation of the fulfilment of proph- 
ecy. Moreover, in the average city that Paul visited, 
he found one or more devout souls who were eagerly 
waiting for "the consolation of Israel." The Acts of 
the Apostles graphically describes how Paul availed 
himself of this foundation work and what a good start- 
ing-point it gave him. But what a dull incomprehen- 
sion of the unity and personality of God the modern 
missionary met, what perverted preemption of the Mes- 
sianic idea he encountered in Buddha and Confucius 
and Mohammed, and what weary years he had to spend 



28 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

before he could effect in even a few minds a lodgment 
of those truths which lay ready to Paul's hand ! Many 
a missionary whose .spirituality and devotion were be- 
yond question toiled for anxious years before he suc- 
ceeded in bringing even one Chinese to the point where 
Paul found a Lydia, a Dionysius, and the men of 
Bercea who "received the word with all readiness of 
mind, examining the scriptures daily whether these 
things were so." Missionaries were endeavoring to 
communicate totally new ideas to peoples who had 
been made sodden and apathetic by an inheritance of 
centuries of the rankest heathenism. It is difficult for 
us who were born and bred in a Christian land and 
who have been familiar with the gospel from our in- 
fancy to understand how hard it is for the Oriental 
mind to grasp the new conceptions which Christianity 
inculcates. We need to remember that our own an- 
cestors were slow in grasping them, and that more than 
one or two centuries passed before Christianity was 
clearly understood even by the Anglo-Saxons. It is 
not surprising, therefore, that the superstition-clouded 
Asiatic listened apathetically and deemed the mission- 
ary "a setter forth of strange gods." 

It is clear that Paul had advantages in approaching 
the men of Corinth and Athens that are not enjoyed by 
a Pennsylvanian who attempts to approach the Hindus 
of Benares or the Chinese of Peking. The modern 
missionary had no such advantage, but had to begin 
among a people who were not only totally ignorant of 
the true God but who, in many places, appeared to be 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 29 

quite unable to conceive of a Supreme Being in terms 
of personality. The notion of one God with attributes 
of holiness, justice, and mercy, lovingly interested 
in the individual man however humble, was utterly 
foreign to the Japanese, the Chinese, and the East 
Indians. Some of them indeed Jiad a vague concep- 
tion of a Supreme Being, but it was so vague and shad- 
owy that they did not recognize its relationship to their 
daily lives. The lower classes thought of a supreme 
power in terms of innumerable demons^ usually malig- 
nant in character and besetting man at every turn with 
evil intent. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that when the mis- 
sionaries spoke of God in the Christian sense, the people 
gave them stolid and uncomprehending attention. 
Curiosity to see the stranger with his peculiar dress 
and color often drew a wondering crowd. Sometimes 
men would gather about a missionary as the men of 
Athens gathered about St. Paul and say in effect: 
"Thou bringest certain strange things to our ears : we 
would know therefore wha/t these things mean/' * But 
when the message was explained, the result was apt 
to be even more discouraging than in the case of Paul, 
for, while many would contemptuously speak of the 
missionary as "this babbler," seldom was the mission- 
ary gladdened because "certain men clave unto him, 
and believed." 

Slowly and laboriously the seed had to be -sown. 
Even yet, Christ is unknown to a large part of the 

^Axts xvii. 20. 



30 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

non-Christian world and most of those who have heard 
of him know him only in such a general way as Amer- 
icans have heard of Mencius or Zoroaster, without any 
real understanding of his character and mission. 
What little they do know of him as a historical per- 
sonage is beclouded and distorted by the hostile pre- 
sumptions of age-old prejudices, superstitions, and spir- 
itual apathies. In such circumstances, to make Christ 
intelligently known is apt to be a long and perhaps a 
wearisome effort. The first missionaries in India and 
China toiled seven years before their hearts were glad- 
dened by a single convert. Fifteen laborious years 
passed in South Africa before the first Zulu accepted 
Christ, and twenty years in Mongolia before visible 
results appeared. After the non-Christian mind once 
fairly grasps the new truth, progress usually becomes 
more rapid ; but at first and sometimes for long periods 
it is apt to be painfully slow. The missionary and the 
Church that supports him often have need of patience. 
Lines of Work. Varying conditions influence the 
form of work that is given prominence in a particular 
field. The missionary usually began with evangelistic 
work, freely using with it tracts and Bible portions, 
and developing schools and hospitals as auxiliaries as 
rapidly as possible. In fields where conditions rendered 
this method impracticable, the missionary began with 
medical or educational work. However fiercely the 
people might oppose public preaching, they might be 
willing to send their children to a school and their sick 
to a hospital. The missionary made no compromise, 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 31 

for he caused it to be understood that pupils and pa- 
tients would hear of Christ. But desire for education 
or healing was so strong that in many lands medical 
and educational work gained a foothold for Christ. 
Prejudices were softened, sympathies won, and avenues 
of approach opened to relatives and friends. Personal 
work with individuals gradually created conditions 
which rendered possible the assembling of little groups 
of people in private houses for religious instruction; 
and at last the time came when the missionary could 
erect a chapel and hold public services. 1 

Several Pioneer Heroes. The story of begin- 
nings is a fascinating one. The lives of such pioneer 
workers as Martyn in Persia, Morrison in China, 
Carey and Duff in India, Judson in Burma, Tyler in 
South Africa, Gilmour in Mongolia, Hepburn and 
Verbeck in Japan, Livingstone in Africa, Paton in the 
South Sea Islands, McGilvary in Siam, and others that 
might be mentioned are readily accessible and vividly 
describe the early days of toil and hardship and 
danger. In reading such accounts, one's attention is 
naturally concentrated on the missionary, and he is 
deeply stirred as he reads of the perils that had to be 
undergone. Think of Judson and Price lying for a 
year and seven months in a foul Burmese prison, 
chained so that they could move only with difficulty, 
breathing hot, fetid air, herded with native criminals 



1 For a description of the missionary at work, compare Chapter 
V of the author's volume, The Why and How of Foreign 
Missions. 



32 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

of the lowest class, and without food except as Mrs. 
Judson, long after her money was exhausted, begged 
it for them like a mendicant from house to house, 
adopting native dress to lessen the probability of insult. 

But while such experiences are worthy of all the 
sympathy that they have received, how little thought is 
.given to the first native Christians, among whom such 
sufferings were far more common than among mission- 
aries. 

Receptive Peoples 

The readiness with which non-Christian peoples re- 
ceived the gospel, and the rates of growth, were natu- 
rally affected by the various conditions which pre- 
vailed and particularly by the characteristics of the 
people. Speaking broadly and with due allowance for 
exceptions, the simpler peoples, many of whom are 
animistic, like those in Africa and the South Sea 
Islands, have responded with comparative eagerness to 
the gospel message. Lacking a strong national organ- 
ization, destitute of political power, accustomed for cen- 
turies to the domination of aliens, and looking up to 
them as superior beings, they accept more readily the 
leadership of the missionary. Their low stage of civil- 
ization made the knowledge of the foreigner more 
wonderful to them. Their temperaments also are apt 
to be childlike in type, capable of swift reversals of 
feeling, readily excited by what they do not understand, 
and prone to surges of emotion. Their native religions 
are not firmly entrenched in established cults and 
powerful hierarchies. Poverty and oppression, too, 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 33 

have often begotten a longing for relief and a hope that 
the missionary can secure it for them. Such conditions 
create a state of receptivity. 

Comparative Conditions. The soil of a country like 
Korea as compared with China was like a western 
prairie ready for the plow of the husbandman. It is 
not surprising that, when such people once turn to 
Christ, they come rapidly. This rapidity, while occa- 
sion for great thanksgiving, is not without its dangers, 
for easily roused feelings sometimes subside almost 
as quickly as they rise. Very touching, however, are 
the wistfulness and sincerity with which the gospel is 
sometimes received. 

Two missionaries went to a village in which the gos- 
pel had never been preached. It was noised abroad that 
they had come, and practically the whole population 
gathered. The interest was so great that the meeting 
continued until a late hour. Finally, the missionaries 
pleaded weariness after a hard day's journey, and were 
shown into an adjoining room for the night. But the 
people did not go away, and the murmuring of their 
voices kept the missionaries from sleeping. Along 
about two o'clock, one of them went back and said 
almost impatiently: "Why don't you go home and go 
to sleep? It is very late and we are tired." The head 
man of the village answered: "How can we sleep? 
You have told us that the Supreme Power is not an 
evil spirit trying to injure us but a loving God who 
gave his only begotten Son for our salvation, and that 
if we will turn from our sins and trust in him, we 



34 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

shall have deliverance from our fears, guidance in our 
perplexities, comfort in our sorrows, and a life forever 
with him. How can we sleep after a message like 
this?" How could they indeed? And the mission- 
aries, forgetting their weariness, sat down by those 
poor people and communed with them until the morn- 
ing dawned. 

Beginnings in Korea. And yet, in even such a 
country, the pioneer missionaries did not have by 
any means an easy task. While the Rev. Horace 
G. Underwood baptized the first Korean believer 
within two years after his arrival and organized the 
first church within three years, only seven persons 
gathered about the Lord's table at the initial admin- 
istration in his house, Christmas day, 1887. After ten 
years of patient labor by the missionaries of several 
denominations, there were still only 141 baptized Chris- 
tians in all Korea. Beginnings in Pingyang, now so 
famous, gave little promise of the future success. 
When the Rev. Samuel A. Moffett arrived in 1889 he 
found a few inquirers and a native evangelist who had 
been sent from Seoul. But he also found a city notori- 
ous for drunkenness and vice. The first Christians 
shone like stars amid that murk of sin. One of them 
was a man by the name of Kim Chung-sik. Brought 
by a friend to a missionary in Seoul, he was converted, 
and in 1894 was sent to Pingyang to aid Dr. M. J. 
Hall, the Methodist missionary there. But by this 
time opposition had become violent. Persecution broke 
out, and Kim was one of the first to be arrested. He 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 35 

and other Christians were cruelly beaten, placed in 
stocks, and warned that if they did not give up the for- 
eigner's religion they would be punished still more 
severely. The others, in their pain and terror, yielded ; 
but Kim remained steadfast. He was taken to the 
death cell, but though believing that he would be de- 
capitated if he did not recant, he exclaimed in a spirit 
worthy of the ancient martyrs: "God loves me and 
has forgiven my sins. How can I curse him? The 
foreigner is kind and pays me honest wages; why 
should I forsake him?" Fortunately, orders came 
from Seoul to release the prisoners, and the mangled 
and half-dead Kim went out with the others. His 
fidelity made a profound impression upon the city, and 
people began to say that there must be something real 
in the new religion when a man was willing to suffer 
so much for it. 

Response of the Karens. The response of the 
Karens of Burma was a notable one. They are de- 
scendants of a people who originally migrated into 
Burma from the western part of China, forced out by 
the ever-advancing Chinese. They are a simple-minded 
people who, before the arrival of the British, suffered 
much from the cruelty of their strong neighbors. 
There has been much speculation as to where and how 
the Karens obtained some of the traditions which they 
jealously guard and hand down from generation to 
generation. This folk-lore apparently points to an 
earlier knowledge of the Biblical narrative, for it in- 
cludes tales of the creation of woman from the rib of 



36 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

the first man, of the sin of the first man and the first 
woman, of the wrath of God on account of transgres- 
sion, and of his promise to send deliverance and happi- 
ness through "white foreigners" who were to come 
"in ships from the west." 

These traditions afforded a remarkable preparation 
for the gospel message. The proclamation of Christ 
seemed to these poor, oppressed people the fulfilment 
of their long-cherished dreams. It is not surprising, 
therefore, that mission work made swift progress 
among the Karens. The first convert, Ko Tha Byu, 
baptized by Dr. Boardman at Tavoy, May 16, 1828, 
proved the first-fruits of a mighty harvest. He was 
a remarkable man. He had already attained middle 
life; he had no education; and appeared to have rather 
a dull mind. When roused, however, his temper was 
furious. He was notorious for robbery and violence, 
no* less than thirty murders having been ascribed to 
him. The Holy Spirit wrought an extraordinary 
change in this man. He immediately gave himself 
wholly to Christian work and soon wielded such re- 
markable power over his people that he became known 
as the Karen Apostle. 

A British official, who knew the Karens well, 
writes : "Forty years ago they were a despised, grovel- 
ing, timid people, held in contempt by the Burmans. 
At the sound of the gospel message they sprang to their 
feet, as a sleeping army springs to the bugle-call. The 
dream of hundreds of years was fulfilled ; the God who 
had cast them off for their unfaithfulness had come 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 37 

back to them; they felt themselves a nation once 
more." 

Some Animistic Barriers. We would not give the 
impression that there are no obstacles to be encoun- 
tered among animistic peoples. Conversion involves 
too great a change to come easily anywhere. Fetish 
worship and the superstition which supports it are 
formidable deterrents. Indolence, superstition, dirt, 
the apathy of despair, the oppression of the literary 
class, and the demoralizing example of officials heavily 
reenforce the ever-present influences of the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. The human heart is not any more 
prone to spiritual things in Korea and Africa than 
elsewhere. Nevertheless, these simpler peoples have 
proved more responsive to the gospel than most peoples 
of other types. 

Larger Cults Hard to Move 

Buddhist and Hindu peoples, like the Burmans, 
Siamese, East Indians, Chinese, and Japanese, present 
greater obstacles, especially where caste is involved as 
in India, Confucian ancestral worship as in China, and 
Shintoism in Japan. If animistic peoples may be com- 
pared to a western prairie, these peoples may be com- 
pared to the wilderness which the first American set- 
tlers found in New 'England, where weary years had 
to be spent in clearing the forest, uprooting stumps, and 
blasting out stones. Religion in most of these lands 
is represented by powerful establishments with numer- 
ous and costly temples, countless shrines, elaborate cere- 



38 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

monials, innumerable priests. Characteristics, too, 
differ widely from those of animistic peoples. They 
are conservative to the last degree, devoted to ancient 
customs of iron rigidity. 

Chinese Immobility, The Chinese, vast in numbers, 
proud of their enormous area, phlegmatic in tempera- 
ment, materialistic in thought, strong in their dislike 
of everything foreign, were stiff soil for the planting 
of the gospel seed. 

Hindu Caste and Mysticism. The Hindus of India 
unite to equal pride of race a caste system which 
hardens superstitious customs into iron molds. Their 
temperament, too, the reverse of the Chinese, is mys- 
tical, speculative, and philosophic, fond of endless dis- 
putations and evaporating concrete ideas into clouds 
of pantheistic mysticism. The devoted Henry Martyn, 
after heroic labors, almost despairingly exclaimed : "If 
I should live to see one Brahman genuinely converted 
to Christianity, it would be to me as great a miracle as 
if a man should rise from the dead." 

Japanese Nationalism. The Japanese have the most 
intense national feeling of all non-Christian peoples, 
sustaining a feudal organization of government and 
society until the latter part of the nineteenth century, 
and developing a national solidarity which involves 
an almost complete submergence of the individual in 
the mass of the nation. When the first Protestant 
church was organized with eleven members in Yoko- 
hama, March 10, 1872, public notice boards were still 
standing that contained the inscriptions : "The evil sect 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 39 

called Christian is strictly prohibited." "So long as 
the sun shall continue to warm the earth let no Chris- 
tian be so bold as to come to Japan." Christ was 
branded as the Christian criminal God, and Dr. Griffis 
says that mothers stilled their crying children by threat- 
ening them with the name of Jesus. As late as 1884 a 
letter was sent from Kyoto addressed "To the four 
American barbarians — Davis, Gordon, Learned, and 
Greene." In it were these sentences : "You have come 
from a far country, with the evil religion of Christ 
and as slaves of the robber Neesima. . . . Those 
who brought Buddhism to Japan in ancient times were 
killed. But we do not wish to defile the soil of Japan 
with your abominable blood. Hence take your fam- 
ilies and go quickly." 

Burmese Buddhism. The Burmese combination of 
pride and indolence has been referred to on a preced- 
ing page. The Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, after 
a visit to Burma in 1870, wrote: "The difficulties of 
Buddhism are extreme. Every one, lay and clerical, 
speaks of them as even greater than those of Hindu- 
ism and Mohammedanism." 

Siamese Indolence and Pride. In Siam, as in Burma 
and the Philippines, tropical climate and prolific nature 
reduce wants and beget indolence. People need little 
clothing and no fuel except for cooking. Fish teem 
in the innumerable streams. The banana, coconut, 
betel, mango, pomelo, orange, jack- fruit, and lime 
grow with little or no cultivation, and the simplest til- 
lage brings abundant yields of rice and vegetables. 



40 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

As for a house, one can be built of the ever-present 
bamboo and thatched with attap 1 in a couple of days 
and at practically no cost. The population is so small 
for the area of the country that there is no such strug- 
gle for existence as that which developed the vigor of 
the Pilgrim Fathers on the rocky hillsides of New 
England, or of the Chinese on those densely populated 
plains where the individual must toil alertly and inces- 
santly or starve. The bitter poverty of China and 
Korea is unknown in Siam. The typical Siamese is 
sleek and well-fed, and he wears more gold and silver 
ornaments than any other native of Asia, even naked 
urchins playing in the streets being adorned with solid 
silver anklets, wristlets, and necklaces. This com- 
fortable, listless, self-satisfied people, proud too of their 
orthodox Buddhism, received the missionary with a 
good-natured indifference which bent under the touch 
like rubber, only to spring back into place a moment 
later. 

A Lao Convert. Beginnings among the Lao of 
northern Siam were somewhat easier. The scholarly 
missionaries foretold the eclipse of August, 1868, a 
week before it occurred. The natives were profoundly 
impressed, and one of the most influential Buddhist 
scholars of Chieng-mai, Nan Inta, was converted. He 
became a Christian of great beauty and strength of 
character and labored indefatigably for Christ until his 
death in 1882. 



^he nipa-palm, the large leaves of which are used for 
thatching. 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 41 

A Buddhist Legend. A beautiful legend had pre- 
pared the way for the gospel among the people of Siam. 
This legend taught that myriads of centuries ago, a 
white crow laid five eggs, each of which was taken by a 
foster-mother and hatched. After a time they entered 
the upper world, each as a lotus. One by one they 
were to bud and be born on earth as Buddhas for the 
adoration of men. Four of these sons have already 
appeared, but the fourth stage now nears its close, and 
when it ends, the fifth and last Buddha will appear. 
He is to unite all the glories and powers of his brothers 
and is to reign 84,000 years. In his reign all men will 
become pure as milk, all who have white hearts will be 
born or reborn, and w r hen he enters Nirvana they too 
shall enter with him. And so in many parts of Siam, 
the missionaries find an expectation of the speedy com- 
ing of One who will incarnate the highest development 
of a noble faith. Whom, therefore, they unconsciously 
expect, the missionaries declare unto them, not in any 
spirit of sectarianism or nationality, but as the One for 
whom the world waits and through whom only man 
may enter into communion with God. 

Martyrs among Pioneer Converts. Although there 
were local advantages of one kind or another, the gen- 
eral fact remains that most of the early Christians in 
all of these lands had a hard time. Little or no real 
sacrifice is required to confess Christ in America, 
where Christianity is popular. But it costs in many a 
mission field. Two of the earliest converts among the 
Laos of northern Siam, Noi Su Ya and Nan Chai, 



42 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

were arrested, and, on being brought before the author- 
ities, confessed that they had forsaken Buddhism. 
"The death-yoke was then put around their necks, and 
a small rope was passed through the holes in their 
ears — used for earrings by all natives — and carried 
tightly over the beam of a house. After being thus 
tortured all night, they were again examined in the 
morning; but, with a fortitude worthy of the noblest 
traditions of the early Church, they steadfastly re- 
fused to deny their Savior even in the very presence of 
death. They prepared for execution by a reverent 
prayer, closing with the words, 'Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit.' They were then taken to the jungle and 
clubbed to death. One of them, not dying quickly 
enough to suit the executioners, was thrust through the 
heart with a spear/' 

A Trying "Christian" Group. Another group of 
peoples comprises the modern descendants of ancient 
world-empires, such as the Persians, Egyptians, and 
Syrians, whose faces are toward a dead antiquity and 
who have all the pride of their illustrious ancestors 
without the robust qualities which made them great. 
A peculiar difficulty among these peoples is encoun- 
tered in nominal forms of Christianity which long since 
lost all their vitality and which exist to-day more as 
tribal cults than as religious systems. The few rights 
which Moslem law concedes to non-Moslems are 
granted only to organized bodies. These sects are 
therefore semipolitical organizations. There is a 
motley variety of them: Armenians, Nestorians, 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 43 

Druses, Nusairiyeh, Jacobites, Maronites, Copts, 
Syriacs, and others. As most of them call themselves 
Christians, and as their Christianity is a clan symbol 
rather than a spiritual faith, they have associated the 
name of Christian in the Mohammedan mind with in- 
feriority, turbulence, and mendacity. Some of these 
sects are more intelligent and progressive than the 
Moslem population about them, and one may occasion- 
ally find among them remarkably strong and attrac- 
tive men and women. The Armenians in particular 
include some of the ablest men in Turkey and Persia. 
But, taking the nominally Christian sects as a whole, 
their reputation is so bad that our missionaries and the 
new converts were forced to call themselves "Protes- 
tants" to distinguish themselves from the "Christians." 
One of the first things that the traveler has to learn is 
that a "Christian" in that part of the world is not a 
Christian. A man belongs to a sect because he was 
born in it, and his religion is simply the badge and 
inheritance of his clan. 

The Shame of Jerusalem. In Palestine, the conduct 
of these alleged followers of the true God is the scandal 
of Christendom. The Holy City impressed me as the 
most unholy place I saw in two journeys around the 
world. Of course no one can now positively identify 
the exact places which are associated with the most 
hallowed events of our religion. But greedy priests 
profess to know them, and have erected churches and 
shrines which are annually visited by myriads of the 
superstitious. In the Church of the Nativity at Beth- 



44 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

lehem and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jeru- 
salem no one sect is allowed a monopoly, but each has 
been assigned its own portion, so that in the same 
building are chapels set aside for Greeks, Armenians, 
Jacobites, Copts, and Syriacs. But the visitor is 
startled to find Moslem soldiers with loaded rifles and 
fixed bayonets constantly on guard in these churches 
to prevent the "Christians" from cutting one another's 
throats. Only a short time before my visit, two men 
were killed in a brawl in the very grotto where Christ 
is said to have been born. In Jerusalem the Church of 
the Holy Sepulcher is a strange mixture of gorgeous- 
ness and squalor. An Armenian service was in prog- 
ress during my visit. The procession could not have 
been matched anywhere outside of a circus. As the 
Patriarch, whose miter blazed with precious stones and 
whose robes were literally cloth of gold, was about to 
enter the sepulcher where Christ's body is alleged to 
have lain, a deacon fumbled in removing his miter, and 
the Patriarch, unimpressed by the solemnity of the 
place and time, snarled at him with the ferocity of a 
wolf and in a voice heard by the whole congregation, 
while fifty Turkish soldiers scattered about the build- 
ing tightened their grip upon their rifles in expecta- 
tion of a free fight. A melee between the Greek and 
Latin monks had actually occurred shortly before, and 
as a result thirty- four Greeks, including twelve priests, 
had been sentenced to imprisonment. An American 
Jewish rabbi sarcastically remarked : "Jesus must have 
left Jerusalem long ago." 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 45 

Hard Moslem Field. Most difficult of all were be- 
ginnings among Mohammedans, 217,000,000 in num- 
ber, scattered over many widely separated countries, 
existing under different governments — sometimes in- 
dependent as in Turkey, sometimes nominally independ- 
ent as in Persia, and sometimes subordinate as in Egypt. 
Rent into sects, mutually hostile, they presented toward 
the non-Mohammedan world a comparatively solid 
front of implacable opposition. For a long time after 
missionaries arrived, preaching to Mohammedans was 
forbidden and evangelism had to be confined to the 
nominally Christian sects. It is not true, as some have 
asserted, that no Moslems have been converted; but 
every student of missions knows that unusual diffi- 
culties attended the effort to give the gospel to the fol- 
lowers of Islam. A girl's confession of Christ in a 
Syrian boarding-school caused a riot in which phys- 
ical violence was averted only by extraordinary tact 
and courage on the part of the missionaries. Indeed, 
according to Moslem law a Christian who had never 
been a Mohammedan was allowed to live in a Moslem 
land only 011 the following conditions : "He shall not 
found churches, monasteries, or religious establish- 
ments, nor raise his house so high as, or higher than, 
the houses of the Moslems; nor ride horses, but only 
mules and donkeys, and these even after the manner of 
women; draw back and give way to Moslems in the 
thoroughfare ; wear clothes different from those of the 
Moslems, or some sign to distinguish him from them ; 
have a distinctive mark when in the public baths, 



46 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

namely, iron, tin, or copper bands ; abstain from drink- 
ing wine and eating pork ; not celebrate religious feasts 
publicly; not sing or read aloud the text of the Old 
and New Testaments, and not ring bells; not speak 
scornfully of God or Mohammed; not seek to intro- 
duce innovations into the state nor to convert Moslems ; 
not enter mosques without permission; not set foot 
upon the territory of Mekka nor dwell in the Had j as 
district." 

The Rev. Henry H. Jessup wrote that shortly after 
the Rev. Joseph Wolff arrived in Tripoli, Syria, he 
said one morning to his interpreter: "Abdullah, I am 
going to the bazaars to preach to the Moslems/' Ab- 
dullah replied : "I beg you not to go, for they will mob 
us." The Doctor insisted, and Abdullah himself after- 
wards described the trip to Dr. Jessup: "We walked 
around to the bazaars and Dr. Wolff mounted a stone 
platform and said : 'My friends, I have come to preach 
to you the gospel of Christ. He that believeth shall 
be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned/ 
I translated as follows: 'The Khowaja says that he 
loves you very much, and that the English and the 
Moslems are all alike/ Whereupon the Moslems ap- 
plauded, and Wolff thought he had made a deep impres- 
sion." 

Dr. Jessup exclaimed: "How could you deceive a 
good man in that way?" He replied: "What could I 
do? Had I translated literally we should have been 
killed; and Wolff may have been prepared to die but 
I was not." 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 47 

But "in spite of all obstacles," writes the Rev. F. E. 
Hoskins, "almost every day the schools were open. Al- 
most every hour the Bible was in the hands of the 
leaders and listeners. The missionaries journeyed up 
and down the field in winter and summer, in heat and 
cold, in sunshine and storm. Thousands were spoken 
to by the way, and tens of thousands w r ere taught in 
their own homes. Often, as I look from the heights 
of Lebanon over that beautiful plain, I trace in fancy 
the shining threads of those consecrated lives stretch- 
ing from mountain to mountain, leading from village 
to village, from home to home, crossing and recross- 
ing, interlacing and intertwining, until the earth is 
covered as with a garment of light and glory. Whether 
men heeded or rejected, not a word spoken, not a 
kindly act, not a prayer, not a tear, was lost or for- 
gotten before God." 

The Water of Life. The spiritual condition of such 
Moslem lands as Syria, Palestine, Persia, and Arabia 
is illustrated by the physical condition. The natural 
rainfall is so small and unevenly distributed that water 
must be sought and laboriously conveyed to the places 
where it is most needed. Formerly, wells, springs, 
ditches, and aqueducts were numerous and the soil 
produced abundantly. The Bible shows how large a 
part Water had in the thought of the people. As many 
as 646 times the inspired writers use the word "water," 
either literally or figuratively, "brooks" 53 times, 
"springs" 29 times, "streams" 24 times, "rivers" 145 
times, "fountains" 49 times, "wells" 61 times, "rain" 



48 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

1 08 times, "cisterns" 5 times. Altogether these words 
occur 1,224 times in the Bible. 

But to-day, many of the watercourses are dried up. 
The ancient wells are choked with the accumulations 
of centuries of neglect. Fountains which once poured 
forth refreshing streams are stagnant pools which 
proffer disease and death rather than life. The modern 
traveler sees barren valleys and stony hillsides baking 
under the burning eastern sun. The general appear- 
ance is arid, save at a few places and at certain seasons. 
The country is literally "a dry and weary land, where 
no water is." 

And is not this a picture of the spiritual condition? 
Here appeared One who said: "Whosoever drinketh 
of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; 
but the water that I shall give him shall become in him 
a well of water springing up unto everlasting life." 
But he who said that was crucified. His disciples were 
persecuted and scattered abroad. Wars, famines, and 
pestilences spread over the land. Men ceased to drink 
of the water of life and turned to the broken cisterns 
of formalism and sin. And so the fountain ceased 
to flow and the region became "as a garden that hath 
no water." 

But in these latter days, men and women of God are 
seeking to reopen the long closed fountains and to 
cause the living waters again to flow. The task is 
painful and laborious. In some places there has 
been no apparent result, and out-stations, which were 
begun in hope, have had to be abandoned. In others, 



FOUNDING THE CHURCHES 49 

spiritual success is within reach, but the missionaries 
have not been so equipped that they could actually 
secure a vital gospel response, and these stations and 
out-stations are not being utilized. In still others, 
spiritual success has come nearer, so that the life-giv- 
ing water is actually coming forth to refresh and fruc- 
tify. We need not be discouraged because some efforts 
appear to have accomplished little. We may rather be 
cheered by the knowledge that the water of life is really 
flowing once more at whatever cost of toil and pain. 
But let the people of God in the home land join with 
the missionaries across the sea in the constant and im- 
portunate prayer that the fountains of eternal life may 
soon more freely and abundantly pour forth their 
treasures. 

Call for Cooperation and Sympathy. Considera- 
tions of this kind should be more generally understood 
if the home churches are to give missionaries and 
native Christians intelligent cooperation and sympathy. 
The pioneer missionary went to a non-Christian world 
which was without the knowledge of God, selfish and 
brutal in its treatment of man, not realizing its own sin, 
ignorant of the great salvation brought by Christ, and 
facing a future in which no star of hope shone. Into 
this world the missionary of the cross carried the lofty 
Christian teachings of God the Sovereign and Father, 
of Jesus Christ the only Savior, of man our brother, 
of sin as the destroyer of the soul, of salvation freely 
offered to men, and of the eternal life of the soul with 
God. Imagine the amazement of the people, the incre- 



50 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

dulity and opposition of some and the eager response of 
others. Precisely what is so vividly pictured in the 
seventeenth chapter of the Book of Acts took place 
when this message was proclaimed in a non-Christian 
land. "Some mocked; but others said, We will hear 
thee concerning this yet again. 

"But certain men . . . believed: . . . and a 
woman/' 



Ill 

TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES OF THE 
CHRISTIAN 

The Way of the Cross 

Christ's Declarations. Some people imagine that 
the Christian life is a sort of escape ladder from trouble. 
Our Lord, however, gave plain warning that disciple- 
ship was beset with perils and difficulties. He did not 
appeal to love of ease but to the heroic spirit of struggle 
and self-sacrifice. He frankly told his apostles that his 
service would alienate friends and even parents; that 
his followers would be delivered up "unto tribulation/' 
"hated of all the nations/' and killed. 1 But he declared, 
nevertheless, that those who were not willing to take 
up the cross and follow him would not be worthy of 
him. 2 

Moderate Testings in America. Even in America, 
where Christianity has a measure of popularity and 
even temporal advantage, the Christian life is not easy. 
Some associations have to be changed. There are so- 
cial customs which a Christian cannot countenance. 
Business and professional men are often tempted to 
resort to questionable methods to gain success, and if 
they refuse to yield to the temptation, they are sorely 
tried by the competition of less scrupulous rivals. 

J Matt. xxiv. 9. 2 Matt. x. 38. 

5i 



52 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

There are, too, temptations in one's own life which 
must be sternly fought by the Christian. Habits have 
to be broken; new view-points created. Mr. Moody 
said that he never had any serious trouble with himself 
until he became a follower of Christ; but that after 
that he had a great deal of trouble. 

More Serious Trials Abroad. These common temp- 
tations and difficulties are enormously increased for 
the convert from a non-Christian faith in Asia and 
Africa, while others still more formidable assail him. 
Their cumulative effect is so great that we ought to 
give unstinted sympathy and respect to our heroic fel- 
low Christians who, in such circumstances, have the 
faith and courage to witness a good confession for 
Jesus Christ. We need not devote time to those temp- 
tations and difficulties which characterize the Chris- 
tian everywhere ; but it may help us to a better under- 
standing of the Church in the mission field if we con- 
sider some of those that are peculiar to Christians 
in non-Christian lands. A large volume would be 
required for adequate treatment of all of them; but 
here we may summarize them in ten classes. 

Ten Difficulties 
i. Opposition of Established Religious Systems. 

Religion in some foirm is universal. No tribe or na- 
tion has ever been found that has not had a religious 
belief of some kind. In countries like Korea and 
Africa this does not manifest itself in a strong external 
organization; but in most mission fields it does so 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 53 

manifest itself. Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Bud- 
dhism, and Confucianism hold sway over large parts 
of the non-Christian world. They are represented by 
innumerable temples and shrines, by prescribed cere- 
monial observances, by countless priests, and by an 
identification with the government which makes relig- 
ion and patriotism synonymous terms. Variations in 
details might be pointed out in particular countries, but 
in a broad sense this characterization is applicable to 
most of Asia and Latin America. The convert to 
Christianity immediately finds the whole power of the 
religious cult arrayed against him. Even though the 
priests care nothing about religion as such, and many 
of them do not, they, like the silversmiths of Ephesus, 
are quick to recognize that the new faith imperils their 
craft, and the convert finds himself, like Paul of old, 
in danger from those who profit by the worship of 
Diana * 

2. Persistence of Pre-Christian Superstitions. This 
is a difficulty which has been little studied and is but 
partially understood. If the reader will apply this test 
to Christianity at home and to his own faith, he may 
find some uncomfortable illustrations even in America 
which is supposed to be many generations from pagan- 
ism. Recent events have given startling evidence of 
the survival of pre-Christian conceptions of the deity 
in western lands. How prone we are to call upon God 
to advance our particular interests even when they 
involve loss or disadvantage to others ! How prone as 

x Acts xix. 24-41. 



54 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

patriots to pray upon the assumption that Jehovah is 
a tribal deity — the God of our country in such a pre- 
eminent sense that we can reasonably expect him to 
further our plans and to confound those of other na- 
tions ! 

If this persistence of narrow ideas of God is still to 
be found among white nations which have known 
Christianity for centuries, one can imagine how much 
more serious it is likely to be among peoples that 
have recently emerged from polytheism. For example, 
India has had a religion rooted in pantheism for more 
than a thousand years. When an East Indian becomes 
a Christian, he does not and cannot instantly divest 
himself of his pantheism. He renounces all that he is 
conscious of having; but the pantheistic interpretation 
of the world, which is an inheritance from centuries of 
ancestral attitudes and to which he is' born and bred, 
subconsciously affects his interpretation of Christian- 
ity. 

The Japanese have a type of patriotism, a national 
solidarity, which expresses itself in worship of the 
emperor as the incarnation of the life of the people. 
The notion of personality in a Supreme Being ha& small 
meaning to them apart from the august imperial per- 
sonage. When a Japanese becomes a follower of 
Christ, he accepts a new notion of the divine person- 
ality and of universal brotherhood. He is as loyal as 
ever to his emperor and nation, but his national char- 
acteristics naturally influence his Christianity. The 
type of religious faith and experience that is develop- 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 55 

ing in Japan is quite distinct from that among the 
neighboring people of Chosen. 1 

Africans are haunted from the cradle to the grave 
by fear of evil spirits. Every occurrence in nature is 
attributed to them. The thunder is the roar of a 
demon; the lightning the flash of his angry eyes. 
Disease is due to a demon in the body. When 
one has been born and brought up among people to 
whom the fear of spirits is an ominously real thing, 
it is impossible for him to discard that fear the moment 
he becomes a Christian. If he recovers from illness, 
or if his family is untouched by an epidemic, he is 
tempted to believe that the Christian spirits are more 
powerful than the heathen spirits and that his adher- 
ence to Christianity will secure to him their protection 
and bring to him other material benefits. 

Low ideas of women are well-nigh universal in non- 
Christian lands. Almost everywhere and even in pro- 
gressive Japan immorality is not considered disgrace- 
ful, but is regarded at worst as a venial sin. The in- 
feriority of woman and her subjection to man are 
fundamental in the non-Christian view. Some peoples, 
the Burmans for example, give her greater freedom 
than others, and some, like the Chinese, honor her if 
she bears many sons ; but nowhere is woman the equal 
of man. In many lands, polygamy and concubinage 
are woven into the very warp and woof of society. 
How can a convert be expected to cast off such firmly 
fixed ideas on the day of his conversion ? 

Japan's official name for Korea. 



56 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

If this thought is followed out, it will lead not only 
to a new appreciation of the difficulties of the native 
Christian, but to some rather disconcerting discov- 
eries in our own Christian life and thought. What 
means the double moral standard in the United States, 
the common disposition to condone in a man what is 
unforgivably condemned in a woman? It is simply 
the persistence of pagan ideas of the relationship of the 
sexes. I venture to believe that there will be Amer- 
ican readers of this book who are superstitious about 
seeing the moon over the left shoulder, and who would 
feel uncomfortable if they found themselves forming 
a party of thirteen at a table. Is there any young lady 
among them who would be willing to be married on 
Friday? Persistence of pagan superstition! 1 

3. Inherited Traditions and Social Customs. Cus- 
tom, powerful even in changing America, is still more 
powerful in conservative Europe and is of iron ri- 
gidity in non-Christian lands. Few American women 
dare to disregard the conventions of the class with 
which they wish to mingle. They know that exclusion 
would be the penalty. The sway of fashion is simply 
the sway of custom. Men are not exempt ; a man must 
dress as other men do. 

We accept all this as a matter of course. But ima- 
gine the situation of a new convert in India where 
fashion, social customs, the established usages of 



x Cf. on this whole subject, "Vestiges of Heathenism within 
the Church in the Mission Field," by Prof. Joh. Warneck, Inter- 
national Review of Missions, October, 1914. 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 57 

people with whom he wishes to associate, are identified 
with beliefs and practises that a Christian cannot 
follow. Apply this thought to caste and the seclusion 
of women in zenanas, to foot-binding in China, and to 
a dozen other customs w T hich will readily occur to one. 
A converted Brahman cannot keep caste; and yet if he 
breaks it, he is instantly ostracized. A Chinese woman 
with unbound feet could not marry and would be an 
object of ridicule and contempt. Natural feet are now 
becoming more common in cities where missionaries 
have long been stationed and the anti-foot-binding 
movement is growing; but in the greater part of China 
unbound feet are still evidence that one is not a lady. 

4. Family Difficulties. There are family difficulties, 
too, as old as Christianity. Our Lord plainly said that 
he had "come to set a man at variance against his 
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the 
daughter-in-law 7 against her mother-in-law," and that 
"a man's foes shall be they of his own household." * 
In America, we have passed the stage where serious 
trouble of this kind is common, although many pastors 
could point to exceptions. But on the mission field 
this difficulty is the rule. The supreme ambition of a 
Chinese is to have sons who will honor his ancestral 
tablet after his death. Imagine his consternation when 
he learns that his son his joined the Christians, who do 
not worship tablets of ancestors. Marriage in Asia is 
arranged by the parents, the young lady, or girl rather, 
for child-marriage is the rule, having no voice what- 

'Matt x. 35, 36. 



58 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

ever in the matter and seldom or never seeing her hus- 
band until the marriage day. Consider what this 
means to a Christian girl who finds herself virtually * 
sold to a dissolute man old enough to be her grand- 
father. Family spirit is intensely strong among 
most non-Christian peoples. Several generations 
often live together in one household and the 
elders are implicitly obeyed. A member of 
the family who becomes a Christian cuts himself off 
from the family life and awakens a storm of protest 
which in some cases finds expression in the fiercest 
persecution. 

5. Conforming to New Standards of Life. The 
difficulties of adaptation to new standards of life are 
great. Reference has been made to purity. Another 
illustration might be found in truthfulness. Non- 
Christian peoples do not deem it wrong to lie and de- 
ceive. It is true that one may find excellent maxims 
on truth-telling in some of the sacred writings of 
Confucianism and Buddhism, but they have had no 
effect upon the life of the people. Deceit is regarded 
as a test of wit and skill. One is expected to deceive 
others if he can do so. If he is caught, he is laughed 
at, not because he lied but because he was too clumsy 
to do it without detection. Where the whole life and 
the entire relationship to others have been character- 
ized by untruthfulness, say to the age of twenty-five, 
is it easy for one converted at that age instantaneously 
to become truthful in word and act, and to adapt him- 
self smoothly to continued relations with untruthful 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 69 

people? When a man has never permitted his wife to 
eat with him or recognized her right to do anything 
but to minister to his comfort or caprice, he is apt to 
find it hard, when converted, to accept her as an equal 
companion. Relationships which have been solidified 
by a lifetime and by inherited traditions of centuries 
back of his own life make it uphill work for him to 
change all the family attitudes. Sabbath observance 
is a problem which deeply perplexes almost every mis- 
sionary. People who have never been accustomed to 
regard one day in seven as sacred find peculiar diffi- 
culties in adapting themselves to the requirements of 
the fourth commandment. It is trying for a shop- 
keeper to close his doors on Sunday when his competi- 
tors keep theirs open. If an employee declines to work 
every seventh day, he loses his job. 

The missionary is sometimes greatly puzzled to 
know how far he should press some of his own stand- 
ards upon his converts. He wisely reflects that his in- 
terpretations of what Christianity requires are not in- 
fallible but that they have been formed by the peoples 
of the West. In the Massachusetts village of my boy- 
hood days it was deemed a monstrous sin to cook food 
or to black one's shoes on Sunday. The beans and 
brown bread were baked on Saturday, and Sunday was 
devoted to church attendance and to such pious reading 
as Fox's Book of Martyrs, and Doddridge's The Rise 
and Progress of Religion in the Soul. To read a 
novel on that day was to imperil one's soul. A common 
incident of the evening was the spanking of boys who 



60 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

had been restless during the long prayers of the minis- 
ter; and at least one of them thought that the future 
prospect was rather gloomy when he heard the hymn 
which feelingly declared that heaven is a place 

"Where congregations ne'er break up 
And Sabbaths have no end." 

In teaching religion in non-Christian lands we 
should be careful not to create artificial and mechanical 
tests of Christian conduct. Where an act is not in- 
herently wrong in itself but is a question of Christian 
expediency or Biblical interpretation, we should be 
slow to forbid it in converts. If we advise against it, 
we should be careful not to put it in the same category 
as stealing or untruthfulness. Many of us even in 
America are still prone to think that other Christians 
are grievously sinning if they do something that is 
contrary to our idea of what a follower of Christ ought 
to do. The tenth and eleventh chapters of the Book 
of Acts may be wisely studied in this connection. We 
may prudently remember that it was the Pharisees who 
insisted that their rules of conduct must be scrupu- 
lously kept and to whom our Lord sharply said : "Wo 
unto you Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and 
every herb, and pass over justice and the love of God" ;* 
and of whom he said to his disciples : "They bind 
heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them 
on men's shoulders." 2 

The example of the apostolic Church in dealing 

x Luke xi. 42. *Matt. xxiii. 4. 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 61 

with the Gentile Christians in Antioch is significant. 
When certain men came down from Judea and taught 
the brethren saying: "Except ye be circumcised after 
the custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved," Paul and 
Barnabas vigorously protested. Appeal was made "to 
Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders,' ' where Phari- 
sees insisted that the new converts must "keep the law 
of Moses." Peter, with characteristic energy, rejoined : 
"Why make ye trial of God, that ye should put a yoke 
upon the neck of the disciples which neither our 
fathers nor we were able to bear?" James supported 
him by saying: "Wherefore my judgment is, that we 
trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to 
God" ; and the Council sensibly wrote to their brethren 
in Antioch : "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to 
us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these neces- 
sary things." * 

All of which is very wholesome reading in like 
circumstances to-day. The line must be drawn some- 
where. Some things are clearly on the wrong side of 
it and must be rebuked. But others are so close to the 
line that liberty of judgment should be recognized in 
Christian charity. 

6. Financial Difficulties. The first converts almost 
invariably suffered in business and financial ways. 
Tradesmen lost their customers; workmen their posi- 
tions ; farmers were unable to sell their products. The 
boycott was very familiar in fact to native Chris- 
tians long before the term came into use in Ireland 

^cts xv. 1-29. 



62 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

and America. A nan-Christian village would have no 
dealings with a neighbor who had broken immemorial 
customs, renounced the national religion, disobeyed 
his parents, and committed the monstrous impiety of 
profaning the village gods. Even the use of the vil- 
lage well was often denied him, and in countless ways 
he was made to suffer on account of his espousal of 
"the foreigner's religion.'' This becomes a serious 
matter to a convert who has a family dependent upon 
him and perhaps aged parents as well. 

7. Educational and Official Disabilities. For a 
hundred years after the beginning of missionary work 
in China no Christian youth could attend a govern- 
ment school or hold an office, because worship of the 
tablet of Confucius was required of all students and 
officials. When Yuan Shih-kai, now President of 
China, was Governor of the Province of Shantung, 
he founded at Tsinan a university on western models, 
and showed his progressive spirit by inviting a foreign 
missionary, the Rev. Watson M. Hayes, to take the 
presidency. Dr. Hayes accepted, but soon resigned 
because he found that even Yuan Shi-kai was not pre- 
pared to relax the rule regarding the worship of the 
tablet of Confucius. In Japan the path to all offices 
opens from the imperial universities. Young men are 
not admitted to these universities unless they have had 
their preparatory training in schools that are recog- 
nized by the government Department of Education. 
But until recently the government would not grant 
such recognition to a school which taught Christianity. 




^^^— 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 63 

In Mohammedan lands, Christians are subjected to 
grievous civil disabilities. If a convert was a Moslem, 
he had to flee from the country, or face the risk of 
assassination, or be drafted into the army, sent to some 
distant place and never heard of again. If he was not 
a Moslem prior to his conversion, he was subjected to 
the trying exactions which were noted in a preceding 
chapter. 

A series of concessions known as "Capitulations" 
gave some relief from these exactions in the case of 
Christians who were organized into registered sects; 
but shortly after the European war broke out, in 19 14, 
the Turkish government took advantage of the oppor- 
tunity to abrogate these capitulations. The European 
and American governments vigorously protested, but 
the war prevented them from enforcing their wishes. 
More liberal ideas are gradually making their way in 
Turkey, as we shall note elsewhere, and it is probable 
that the letter of Moslem law against Christians will 
not be strictly enforced in the future. But the lot of 
a Christian is not likely to be a comfortable one in the 
Turkish empire, especially if he was converted from 
Islam. 

In most mission fields, a Christian is deprived of 
advantages and opportunities that are open to non- 
Christians. Ambitious young men in America some- 
times hesitate to confess Christ because they fear that 
the requirements of the Christian life will hamper their 
efforts for advancement. One can imagine how seri- 
ous this difficulty is in a non-Christian land. 



64 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

8. Social Ostracism. The whole structure of society 
in a non-Christian community is pervaded, as we have 
seen, by the customs and superstitions of a non-Chris- 
tian faith. When religion is identified with family, 
community, and national life, renunciation of that re- 
ligion is considered disloyalty, disrespect to ancestors, 
and repudiation of all former relationships. The New 
Testament affords many illustrations of the trouble of 
the early Christians at this point. The Pharisees had 
hedged life about with prescribed rites and ceremonies 
and had made religion consist in observing them. 1 A 
Christian found it difficult even to join in a social meal 
with friends, for there were customs in eating and 
drinking which were superstitious in their meaning. 
The meat had been offered to idols, and the first Coun- 
cil of the Christian Church at Jerusalem found it ne- 
cessary to warn the disciples not to eat such meat. 2 

Man is a social being. He is dependent upon his 
associations in ways that it is difficult for him to real- 
ize until he takes some position which detaches him 
from them. What Benjamin Kidd, in his remarkable 
book on Social Evolution, said of the social develop- 
ment which is called western civilization is equally 
true of the nations in non-Christian lands. Their 
social development, too, "must be regarded as an or- 
ganic growth, the key to the life history of which is 
to be found in the study of the ethical movement which 
extends through it. ... If we reflect how deeply these 
peoples have been affected at every point by the move- 

x Matt. xii. 2; Mark vii. 3. 2 Acts xv. 29. 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 65 

ment in question; how profoundly their laws, institu- 
tions, mental and moral training, ways of judging con- 
duct, and habits of thought have been influenced for an 
immense number of generations in the course of the 
development through which they have passed, we shall 
at once realize that it would be irrational and foolish 
to expect that any individuals of a single generation 
should have the power to free themselves from this in- 
fluence. We are, all of us, whatever our individual 
opinions may be concerning this movement, uncon- 
sciously influenced by it at every point of our careers 
and in every movement of our lives. . . . No training, 
however religious and prolonged, no intellectual effort, 
however consistent and concentrated, could ever en- 
tirely emancipate us from its influence. In the life of 
the individual, the influence of habit of thought or 
training once acquired can be escaped from only with 
the greatest difficulty and after the lapse of a long in- 
terval of time." 

9. Inherited Conceptions of Religion as Form. All 
the non-Christian religions make religion consist 
primarily in the observance of forms and ceremonies. 
None of the ethnic faiths establish a vital connection 
with conduct. One may be a good Buddhist and a bad 
man. The most notorious profligates in Peking are 
the monks in the Llama Temple. The most obscene 
images and practises in India are in the temples. Re- 
sorts of vice in Japan are openly visited by Buddhist 
priests. In fact, non-Christian religions are not relig- 
ions at all in the sense in which we use the term. They 



66 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

know nothing of personal relationship to a holy and 
loving God who requires of a man a pure life and who 
communicates to him the power to live it. 

When, therefore, an Asiatic becomes a Christian, 
his idea of religion as form clings to him. He is apt 
to interpret the new teaching in terms of ceremonial 
rather than of life. It is not easy for him to realize 
that it is wrong for him to do what he has always done 
as a matter of course, and that "faith apart from 
works is dead." It is hard for him to grasp the idea 
of religion as a faith cleansing the heart and finding 
expression in a transformed life. 

This difficulty is particularly serious in the so- 
called Roman Catholic fields of Latin America 
and the Philippine Islands. We say "so-called," for 
the religion of these lands is really not that of the 
Roman Catholic Church with which we are familiar in 
the United States. Nominally indeed it is the same. 
Organization and ritual and other formal features are 
identical. But priests of such ignorance and supersti- 
tion, and often of such bad personal character would 
not be tolerated in any diocese in the United States. 
The Roman Catholicism of these lands is only a thinly 
veneered heathenism. P/rior to the coming of Prot- 
estant missionaries the common people knew little or 
nothing of vital religion. Rome had exacted from 
them only an outward obedience to prescribed forms. 
They were accustomed to the wholesale methods of 
external conformity. Our conceptions of personal 
faith were strange to them. I was in a Negros market 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 67 

in the Philippines one evening, when "the Angelus" 
sounded. Instantly a hush fell upon the crowded 
booths and every native rose and stood with uncovered 
head and reverent attitude while the deep tones of the 
church bell rolled solemnly through the darkening air. 
But a moment later the people turned again to their 
gambling and bickering and bino or rice whisky, evi- 
dently without the faintest idea that there was any 
connection between worship and conduct. It is a for- 
midable task in siich circumstances to build up a 
church of truly regenerated souls, to make the people 
realize that a Christian must not gamble nor be im- 
moral, nor spend Sunday afternoons at cock fights, 
but that he must seek to know and to follow Christ in 
sincerity and truth. 

10. Evil Conduct of Nominal "Christians." The 
evil conduct of western "Christians'' is another for- 
midable difficulty. In non-Christian lands, religion is 
tribal or national. Every Chinese is supposed to be a 
Confucianist, every Siamese a Buddhist, every Turk 
a Moslem, every East Indian a member of one or 
the other of the many religious bodies into which the 
population is divided. Accustomed to classifying men 
in this way, Asiatics naturally imagine that every 
American and European is a Christian. They there- 
fore give Christianity the credit or blame for every- 
thing that white men do. The result is that this imag- 
inary Christianity is sometimes the most formidable 
obstacle that true Christianity encounters. 

Americans have sometimes thoughtlessly strength- 



68 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

ened this impression by referring to the nations of 
Europe and America as "Christian nations." There 
are no Christian nations. Even in lands where there 
are the largest number of individual Christians, the 
national life and relationship with other nations cannot 
be fairly described as Christian in any proper sense. 
Decent municipal government in America is the excep- 
tion rather than the rule. Many states are notoriously 
dominated by corrupt bosses and saloon politics. Na- 
tional policies in practically all western lands are based, 
as a rule, upon desire for commercial, territorial, or 
political aggrandizement — all purely material and self- 
ish. Gladstone ought to know, and he said that the his- 
tory of governments is the most immoral part of his- 
tory. 

The great war in Europe is a frightful illustration 
of the fact that nations are not Christian, whatever 
many of their citizens may be. Leading Christians on 
both sides have publicly lamented this. Mr. J. H. Old- 
ham of Edinburgh voiced the common opinion when 
he said: "Whatever be the distribution of immediate 
responsibility, the tragedy in which the nations are in- 
volved is in its ultimate nature the result of an attitude 
and temper that refuse to accept the law of Christ as 
the rule of life/' 

Unchristian Conduct. The dealings of white nations 
with Asia and Africa have been characterized by deceit, 
cruelty, and wanton aggression to an extraordinary 
degree. All but a sixtieth of Africa, nearly all of the 
island world, and many parts of Asia are ruled by 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 69 

"Christian" nations that are naturally regarded by the 
natives as foreign conquerors and are hated accord- 
ingly. 

The foreign settlements in the port cities of Asia 
and Africa are notorious sinks of iniquity. Traders 
and travelers have roamed through Asia and Africa 
for many years. Some of them are men of high char- 
acter; but the conduct of many is illustrated by Angus 
Hamilton, who proudly wrote in his book on Korea 
that when the Korean sellers of curios became impor- 
tunate, he "found a specific cure for their pestiferous 
attentions to be administered best in the shape of a 
little vigorous kicking." A sorcerer so aggravated 
him that, to use his words: "Losing my temper and 
reason altogether, I dropped his gongs and cymbals 
down a well, depositing him in it after them. The 
interpreter will suggest that he requires a servant. 
For this remark he should be flogged." When the 
poor inhabitants of a poverty-stricken village declined 
to sell him their scanty stock of chickens, "the grooms, 
the servants, and the interpreter at once tackled the 
mob, laying about them with their whips . . . and 
fowls and eggs were at once forthcoming. The head 
groom came up to me, demanding an increase of thirty 
dollars. I refused and thrashed him with my whip. 
The end of my journey for the moment had come with 
a vengeance. The head groom stormed and cursed 
and ran raving in and out of the crowd. He then 
came for me with a huge boulder, and as I let out 
upon his temple, the riot began. My baggage was 



70 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

thrown off the horses and stones flew through the air. 
I hit and slashed at my assailants and for a few minutes 
became the center of a very nasty situation." Nasty, 
indeed! It would have been still nastier if he had 
acted that way in America. 

In Siam, travelers steal images of Buddha from the 
temples. In India, hotels have to post the notice: 
"Visitors will be good enough not to strike the serv- 
ants." Many commercial men have manifested the 
same spirit. Gorst says that "rapine, murder, and a 
constant appeal to force chiefly characterized the com- 
mencement of Europe's commercial intercourse with 
China." 

As traders, travelers, and officials combined greatly 
outnumber missionaries, they, rather than missionaries, 
usually determine the status of the foreigner in the 
public mind, and they create against "Christians," as 
Asia believes them to be, an indiscriminate hostility. 
Christianity is to him the religion of the white man 
who is despoiling his territory, undermining his na- 
tional independence, upsetting all the economic condi- 
tions of his life, swaggering about his streets, robbing 
him of his goods, and insulting his women. Imagining 
that all white men are Christians, he blindly hates them 
all. Viceroy Li Hung-chang wrote in his diary, Febru- 
ary 17, 1886: "I am more and more convinced that 
the Christian religion is not so much hated in itself, but 
that the animosity, which is found to a greater or less 
extent throughout China against the 'foreign devils/ is 
because they are foreign. The foreigner is disliked, 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 71 

not because of his religion, but because he is otherwise 
feared. He is feared not at all in this year because he 
may be the agent of Jesus Christ or a follower of that 
great man, but as a possible enemy to the political and 
industrial independence of the count ry." * 

Asiatics are learning, too, of the many unchristian 
things that are done in professedly Christian lands. 
The vice-mayor of Tokyo said, during a visit to the 
United States, that the most serious obstacle to the 
progress of Christianity in Japan is that the Japanese 
people are coming to know America. "The young 
people in my country/' said he, "cannot help seeing 
that Christians in America care most about material 
things, not about the things of the spirit; that there is 
little reverence here and many evil conditions. That 
leads them to wonder if Christianity is really as good 
as the missionaries say." 

Meantime, the men whose evil example is doing so 
much to prejudice the good name of Christianity 
abroad are the very ones who sneer at the native 
Christian and loudly assert that foreign missions are 
a failure. 

It will be readily understood that the demoralizing 
influence of such antichristian white men is a for- 
midable obstacle to the Church in the mission field. 
It is a stumbling-block to the humble-minded convert. 
It shakes his faith to see his white brothers openly do 
the things that the Bible exhorts him not to do — swear, 
drink, gamble, cheat, profane the Sabbath. It brings 

Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, 40, 41; cf. also 58, 59. 



72 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

upon him a storm of reproach from his neighbors and 
friends who revile him for being associated with 
"Christians." No other temptation or difficulty is so 
grievous to him as this. 

Opposing Forces 

The Pull of the World. The list of the temptations 
and difficulties that beset the Church in the mission 
field might be extended, and more might be said, and 
perhaps should be said, under each classification; but 
perhaps we have indicated enough to give some idea of 
what a young man or young woman in a non-Chris- 
tian land must face when a confession of Christ is 
made. All the customs, traditions, and associations of 
life are arrayed against him. Family, social, and finan- 
cial difficulties close around him. The pull of ambition, 
of financial success, of social recognition, of political 
preferment is away from Christianity. The change 
that is involved in his own heart and life is revolu- 
tionary. 

The Power of the Spirit. , "Out there the 
great issue is tried with all external helps re- 
moved. The gospel goes with no subsidiary 
aids. It is spoken to the people by the stam- 
mering lips of aliens. Those who accept it do so 
with no prospect of temporal gain. They go counter 
to all their own preconceptions and to all the prejudices 
of their people. Try as we may to become all 
things to all men, we can but little accommodate our 
teaching to their thought. Often and often have I 



TEMPTATIONS AND DIFFICULTIES 73 

looked into the faces of a crowd of non-Christian 
Chinese and felt keenly how many barriers lay between 
their minds and mine. Reasoning that seems to me 
conclusive makes no appeal to them. I have often 
thought that, if I were to expend all my energies to 
persuade one Chinaman to change the cut of his coat, 
I should certainly plead in vain. And yet I stand up 
to beg him to change the habits of a lifetime, to break 
away from the whole accumulated outcome of heredity, 
to make himself a target for the scorn of the world in 
which he lives, to break off from the consolidated social 
system which has shaped his being, and on the bare 
word of an unknown stranger to plunge into the haz- 
ardous experiment of a new and untried life, to be lived 
on a moral plane still almost inconceivable to him, 
whose sanctions and rewards are higher than his 
thoughts as heaven is higher than earth. While I 
despair of inducing him by my reasonings to make the 
smallest change in the least of his habits, I ask him, 
not with a light heart but with a hopeful one, to submit 
his whole being to a change that is for him the making 
of his whole world anew. The missionary must either 
confess himself helpless, or he must to the last fiber of 
his being believe in the Holy Ghost. I choose to believe, 
nay I am shut up to believe, by what my eyes have 
seen." * 

How the churches in the mission field meet this 
supreme test we shall see in the next chapter. 

X J. Campbell Gibson, Mission Problems and Mission Methods 
in South China, 29, 30. 



IV 

CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN AND RE- 
SULTANT CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH 

Fruits a T,est. "By their fruits ye shall know 
them," said our Lord. No other religion invites this 
test; no other can meet it. We have seen that non- 
Christian religions establish no vital connection with 
conduct; that, while some of their founders praised 
virtue, their present-day requirements do not include 
it, nor have they ever communicated power for it. 
Christianity, however, not only teaches faith but a 
gospel which is the power of God, and it makes the 
resultant character a test of the genuineness of faith. 
"What doth it profit, my brethren," said James, "if a 
man say he hath faith, but have not works ? Can that 
faith save him? . . . Faith, if it have not works, is 
dead." 1 It is sadly true that some professed Chris- 
tians both at home and abroad are condemned by this 
test, sadly true that churches as organized bodies have 
often failed to attain the standard for which their Lord 
calls. Nevertheless we must apply the test, and whether 
we do or not, the Judge of all the earth will certainly 
do so. In Matthew xxv. 31-46, Christ tells us that, at 
the final judgment, rewards and punishments will be 
assigned on the basis, not of faith, but of character 
and deeds. 



Mames ii. 14-17. 

75 



76 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Supporters of foreign missionary work therefore 
have a right to ask not only as to the number but as 
to the kind of Christians in the mission field. They 
should not indeed demand a standard of consistency 
of Christians who have recently emerged from pagan- 
ism which has not yet been attained by the Christians 
of America who have had far greater advantages. But 
they are justified in asking what degree of consistency 
has been attained, and what promise there is for the 

future. 

Proofs of Character 

Repentance. A fair test to begin with may be re- 
pentance. Do facts indicate its sincerity? After the 
Rev. Eugene P. Dunlap had preached for a month in 
a Siamese village, the head man said that he was con- 
verted. How did the villagers know that he was telling 
the truth, especially as he was notorious for dishonesty, 
immorality, and cruelty? He brought out his idols 
and burned them. He called up his debtors and, to 
their amazement, paid them in full. He put away his 
concubines, making provision for their support and 
declaring that he would live with one wife. He 
brought out his bottles of liquor, Scotch whisky and 
French brandy, and broke them. He asked pardon of 
all whom he had treated unjustly. Then he kneeled 
down before his assembled people and solemnly ded- 
icated his life, his family, and his possessions to the 
service of Jesus Christ. A Chinese merchant was con- 
verted. How did any one know that he was? He de- 
stroyed his scales, and bought new ones. Christianity 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 77 

meant to him after his conversion full weight. There 
are tradesmen in America who need that kind of con- 
version. 

The Rev. A. W. Halsey says that he met a head man 
at Lolodorf, Africa, who, with fifteen others, had 
walked twenty-seven miles to attend the church. He 
was a man of more than ordinary ability, and his face 
was radiant as he worshiped God. When converted, 
he had five wives. Wives are valuable property in 
Africa, and these had cost him money. He gave up a 
good portion of his fortune when he sent away four of 
his five wives, refusing to take money for them and 
carefully seeing that they did not suffer. 

Missionary letters and books teem with similar in- 
stances. The destruction of household idols, the 
burning of opium-pipes, the liberation of slaves, the 
payment of long-deferred debts, the breaking of im- 
moral relations, are common manifestations of conver- 
sion upon which non-Christian neighbors look with 
wonder. Missionaries say that conversion is almost 
invariably accompanied by confession of sin and resti- 
tution wherever it is necessary and possible. A man in 
Shansi confessed that during the Boxer uprising he 
appropriated a large sum of money that had been sent 
by the foreigners in Pingyang-fu to a missionary who 
afterwards died ; and now after the lapse of years he 
made a clean breast of it. As one of the humble 
hearers said: "The Holy Spirit surely has come." 
Among the converts in Hinghwa, in the Province of 
F-ukien, were members of a firm of importers of mor- 



78 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

phine. They brought their whole stock to the church 
and turned it over to their minister to be destroyed. 

Confession of heinous sins by professing Christians 
during the intensity of revivals has been cited as evi- 
dence that the Christianity of converts was shallow. It 
is odd that any one should draw such a conclusion. 
The Spirit of God led those humble Asiatics to confess 
to the very sins which are notoriously common in 
Europe and America. It ill becomes travelers from 
countries where such sins are not confessed until in- 
vestigations expose them to criticize Christians in Asia 
who have the grace to confess them voluntarily. 

Home Life. Home life, as Americans are familiar 
with it, is almost unknown among non-Christian 
peoples. It is true that there are often parental affec- 
tion, filial respect, and occasionally real love between 
husband and wife. But those qualities which go to 
make up a Christian home are seldom found. The 
typical non-Christian house of the common people is a 
hovel, destitute of comfort, swarming with vermin, 
and inhabited by slatternly women and children caked 
with dirt. The wife is little better than a slave and is 
valued by her husband only for the work that she does 
and the children that she bears. Christianity trans- 
forms these homes. The traveler can usually identify 
such a family by the manifest evidences of neatness, 
equality, and self-respect. The house, however 
humble, is clean. The mother and children are clean. 
A Christian village is like an oasis in a desert. 

Conduct. Conduct outside of the home is character- 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 79 

ized by like transformation. It is reported that there 
were such changes in the lives of converts after evangel- 
istic meetings in one city, that non-Christian Chinese on 
the streets said to one another : "The Christian's God 
has come down/' The standards insisted upon in mo'st 
of the churches in the mission field relate not only to 
the greater sins but to many that are considered venial 
even in America. Church discipline is usually strict. 
A member who does not have family prayers and ask 
a blessing at meals, who does not observe the Sabbath 
or regularly attend church, is called to account. 

The Christian is a marked man among his fellows, 
distinguished not merely for his difference in faith, 
but for superior morality, thrift, and integrity. The 
Siamese Governor of Puket was so impressed by the 
improvement which Christianity had wrought in the 
converts in his province that he said: "Wherever the 
Christian missionary settles, he brings good to the 
people. Progress, beneficial institutions, cleanliness, 
and uplifting of the people result from his labors." 
The High Commissioner, with the same idea, told the 
Rev. Eugene P. Dunlap, in 1907, that he would give 
5,000 ticals 1 for a hospital in Tap Teang and 10,000 
ticals for one in Puket if the missionary would open 
permanent stations ; and Prince Damrong, Minister of 
the Interior, said that the government was glad to give 
positions to the kind of young men who were trained 
in the Bangkok Christian College, because they pos- 
sessed the qualities of intelligence, ambition, and char- 

^he tical of Siam has a value of 39 cents. 



80 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

acter which were desired in official service. Several 
years ago, when Chinese merchants were asked to sub- 
scribe money to rebuild a bridge which had been de- 
stroyed by a flood, they imposed the condition that the 
money should be expended by Christians "because 
Christians could be trusted not to steal it." 

"It is a high estimate that I have formed of the 
character of many native Chr;istians, ,, said Sir Andrew 
H, L. Fraser, after long residence in India. "There 
are undoubtedly some natives who are only nominally 
Christian and who give an evil report to Christianity ; 
but the missionary bodies as a rule are careful in this 
matter; and we have no reason to be ashamed of our 
Indian Christian friends for whom I have as high a 
regard as for my friends in the West and whose char- 
acters I have recognized as becoming more and more 
Christlike as they submit themselves to his teaching 
and to the influence of his spirit." 1 

The Bible. The knowledge of the Bible shown by 
converts in mission lands should shame many Chris- 
tians in America. The police of a certain country once 
professed to believe that a mission school was "sedi- 
tious," and following the example of Russian police in 
such circumstances, they arrested all the native teachers 
and many of the students and hurried them off to a jail 
in another city. The Christians had no idea what they 
had been arrested for, but they suspected that it was 
on account of their faith in Christ. Did they keep 
silence? It no more occurred to them than it did to 



1 Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, 268, 269. 




KOREAN WOMEN GATHERED FOR BIBLE STUDY 
KOREAN MEN GATHERED FOR BIBLE STUDY 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 81 

Paul and Silas. When they were led through the 
streets, handcuffed and chained to one another, they 
sang the hymn: "Glory to his name." Every one 
felt that God had permitted this trial because he had 
something for them to do in prison. They could tell 
the other prisoners about Jesus, as Paul had done. 
They had their Testaments in their pockets. When the 
police searched them, the Christians asked permission 
to keep their Testaments ; but the officers refused, ex- 
cept in one instance where one of the teachers per- 
suaded a guard to let him keep the little book. \ 

The next morning, he tore his New Testament leaf 
from leaf and passed the leaves through the cracks be- 
tween his cell and the next cell, and the boys there 
passed them on into the next cell, and so on until every 
Christian in that old prison had leaves from the Word 
of God. Each one took his leaf and committed it to 
memory, then exchanged it with another boy and com- 
mitted the new leaf, until they had committed whole 
books of the New Testament. In the months of 
imprisonment, some committed the whole of the New 
Testament. When they came from prison and told 
this story to the missionary who narrated it to me, he 
tested some of the boys as to the truth of their state- 
ment. "Repeat John vii. 36," he said to one boy. How 
many readers of this page can give it? This youth 
reflected a moment how the seventh chapter of John 
began, ran down the chapter until he came to the 
thirty-sixth verse, and then repeated it word for word. 
Several said that, while they were being tortured, they 



82 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

quietly repeated over and over the passages which they 
had learned, and one of them said: "Jesus came so 
near, oh, so near, as we quoted God's Word." 

A Sunday-school worker from America, visiting 
Korea some years ago, was troubled because he found 
what seemed to be a small proportion of children in the 
Sunday-schools. The fact was that the whole of each 
group of believers was in Sunday-school studying the 
Word of God. Practically all the boys and girls were 
there ; but scattered through the great assemblages with 
their parents, they were not so readily noticed by an 
American to whom a Sunday-school meant a gathering 
of children with only a handful of adults. Korea has 
the best kind of Sunday-schools, for they are congre- 
gational Bible schools. In addition to the customary 
public worship, the entire congregation meets at a 
separate hour for Bible study, adults and children 
studying the Scriptures together. 

Bible training classes are a prominent feature of 
Christian work in many fields, the people at stated 
seasons gathering in multitudes for one or more weeks 
of special study. These training classes have become a 
conspicuous feature of the work of several fields. Be- 
ginning with one class of seven men in 1891, the classes 
in one mission alone have increased in numbers until 
in a recent year 1,821 classes enrolled 47,484 members. 
All expenses are met by the native Christians. It is 
not uncommon for men to walk two hundred miles to 
these classes. 

The following extracts from letters are samples of 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 83 

scores that I might cite from my regular correspond- 
ence : "The men's class which has just closed was 
attended by 500 men. They came from all parts of 
the Province and studied well. The spirit was fine." 
"We have just closed a splendid men's Bible class of 
ten days. The attendance was 358." "The whole 
number in my circuit alone during this past winter 
exceeds 6,500 persons who studied the Bible regularly 
for a week or more." "The little bands of Christians 
scattered through the mountain villages appreciate the 
light and joy the gospel brings into their dark lives. 
The other day I noticed a niche in the bank near some 
workmen, and I saw that it contained four Testaments 
and hymn-books. Then I remembered how I had 
found one of my coolies on the top of a pass, resting 
by the side of his load and reading Mark's Gospel and 
that I had heard him offer a helpful prayer in a meet- 
ing when he was only one year old in his Christian life. 
As I stood thinking of these things, the men came 
around the bank, laid down their shovels and picks and 
asked me to lead their rest-time prayer-meeting." 
Where in America do laboring men take Testaments 
and hymn-books to their daily toil and bow in prayer 
after their noon-day lunch? 

Prayer. The prayer life is often one of marked 
power. The family altar is the rule in Christian homes 
in the mission field, and no meal is eaten without asking 
the blessing of God upon it. The prayer-meeting, like 
the Sunday-school, is usually attended by a majority 
of the membership, while in the United States the 



84 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

average attendance is about one tenth. I attended the 
prayer-meeting in the Yun Mot Kol Church in Seoul 
on a rainy night. A native Christian led, and the 
people did not know that a traveler would be present ; 
but I found a thousand Christians assembled! Twelve 
hundred people packed the Syen Chun Church the 
evening we spent there. This was larger than usual, 
but the ordinary attendance at these week-night meet- 
ings exceeds that of a good-sized Sunday morning con- 
gregation in America. It is worth going far to hear 
those Christians pray. They kneel with their faces to 
the floor and utter petitions as those who know what 
it is to have daily communion with God. 

A missionary in China says that the prayerfulness 
of the two Chinese pastors in his station has been a 
rebuke and an inspiration to him. "Their conversa- 
tion is usually on the Scriptures, the passages of which 
they can find better than any foreigner I know; ami 
their thoughts are much on the problems of the little 
groups of Christians. Often on the road we have 
stopped and prayed specifically for what the leaders 
had jotted down of definite petitions for particular 
needs. The reality, sincerity, and naturalness of their 
prayers, both in thanksgiving and petition, have im- 
pressed me. Men who are not living in the Spirit 
cannot 'get up' such prayers as these Christians pray 
all the time." 

The Chinese believers of Chefoo, burdened for the 
salvation of their countrymen, invited pastors and 
leading members of churches in all the surrounding 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 85 

country to join them in a season of intercessory prayer, 
subscribing liberally to pay for the entertainment of 
the guests. The members of a training school for 
Bible women fasted three times a week for a month 
and paid the money saved into the entertainment fund. 
Pastors in scores of places began to pray, first for a 
revival in their own hearts and then in the church and 
community; and the prayers were answered. Daily 
meetings twice a day for fifty days had prepared the 
way to expect great things from God, and thousands 
were present instead of the hundreds anticipated. 
Four simultaneous meetings on the closing night ag- 
gregated 7,000 people. 

"Pray! pray!" exclaimed a Chinese Christian as he 
looked from a hilltop upon villages that knew nothing 
of Christ. He and his companions were standing; but, 
when they finished their intercession, they were pros- 
trate on their faces. 

Some African Christians covenanted together that 
each would select a retired spot in the forest to which 
he would go daily for solitary communion with God. 
If any member of the little band appeared to be grow- 
ing cold in his Christian life, one of the others would 
gently inquire: "Is the grass growing on your path, 
brother?" 

Giving. A good test of Christian character is giv- 
ing. We count it so at home, and it is even a severer 
test on the foreign field where poverty is bitter and 
the struggle for existence barely keeps people from 
starvation. 



86 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Financial sacrifice in Christian work is so common 
as to be accepted as a matter of course. Boon Itt, a 
gifted Siamese, refused a government position at 
$4,000 a year and became an evangelist at $600. An 
African teacher at Benito, who was receiving five 
dollars a month from the mission, refused an offer of 
twenty dollars a month from the Spanish governor. 
A missionary in Egypt writes of a man who left 
an influential home of the old Turko-Egyptian aris- 
tocracy, to earn little more than a laborer's pittance 
and to live in one cheap room in a poor district, on 
the simplest fare, but with a well-spring of joy in his 
heart. How many of us comfortable Christians at 
home would come successfully through the same test? 
A Chinese minister on $7.50 a month declined an offer 
from the city officials to superintend a public school at 
three times his salary, saying : "China must have Christ, 
even if I starve." 

When the little company of believers in Caracas, 
Venezuela, heard that the European war had seriously 
interfered with the receipts of the Board in New York, 
they made a self-denial offering of $35. An elder 
wrote: "Our people came very gladly, bringing every 
one a little envelope containing his gift. We know our 
duty to give to the cause of the gospel, though we can- 
not give as much as we owe. Our people are very poor 
and few. We know that you have many difficulties 
there in these present times of war, and the difficulties 
here especially are great. The houses are very dear, 
but now is your opportunity and ours. We have the 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 87 

hope in the Lord. God bless you until he comes! 
Know, my brethren, your work in the Lord is not in 
vain. It is not a waste, as Judas thought when Mary 
brought the very precious ointment of spikenard to 
anoint Jesus. No, many of us will give testimony 
to your work in the presence of Jesus when he comes 
upon the clouds. We send these letters to express 
our gratefulness, asking the Lord to help you to the 
glory of Jesus in his Kingdom. Amen. ,, 

This offering meant to that handful of poor people 
as much as $350 would have meant to an equal number 
of Christians in the United States, and the loving 
letter was a treasure beyond price. 

Loyalty. Loyalty to the Church is marked. The 
Christians look upon their Church as the center of 
their lives and they give to it the devotion of their 
hearts. Bishop Thoburn said that the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church at Rangoon, Burma, was the best work- 
ing church he had known in any land. Ill health com- 
pelled the two missionaries at Efulen, Africa, to go to 
America, and two years passed before they could re- 
turn to the field. They had left six believers, for the 
station was then young. They dared not hope that 
they would find any left, for how could six new con- 
verts stand alone in an interior African village? They 
found that the little company had met several times 
every week for prayer and Bible study and that they 
had witnessed so faithfully for Christ that all the 
neighboring villages knew that there were "J esus men" 
in Efulen. One does not wonder that from such a 



88 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

beginning the church at Efulen is now a great con- 
gregation. 

The old Spanish house in which we were entertained 
during our visit in Iloilo, Philippine Islands, had a 
wide hall with a broad flight of stairs. About five 
o'clock Saturday afternoon I was startled to find the 
hall and stairs packed with Filipinos, sitting quietly 
on the floor and steps. They had walked in, men, 
women, and children, from the outlying villages, some 
of them four hours distant, in order to attend the Sun- 
day service. So many regularly did this, coming Sat- 
urday and remaining till Monday, that the missionaries 
were obliged to rent a large room in which the men 
could spend the nights, the women occupying the 
chapel. They brought their own food or bought it in 
Iloilo, and they contentedly slept on the floor. When 
men and women walk fifteen miles under a hot sun and 
sleep two nights on a board floor to attend a plain 
chapel where there were no altar lights or gorgeous 
vestments or fragrant incense, but only the preaching 
of the simple gospel of divine love, there must be some- 
thing more than curiosity in their hearts. 

Growth in Grace. Growth in grace is not uniform 
in all fields nor characteristic of every group of believ- 
ers in any field; but it is so marked in the Christian 
body as a whole that almost every observant visitor is 
impressed by it. One might say of many churches in 
Asia and Africa what Dr. Charles R. Watson said 
after a visit to Egypt: "The native Church is enjoying 
a deeper spiritual life. Conferences for spiritual quick- 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 89 

ening are held annually. Those held by and for women 
are marked by unusual blessing. There is a readiness 
to try new methods of work and to launch out upon 
new fields, perhaps the clearest proof of a fuller recog- 
nition of the Spirits leadership!" 

There is something very beautiful in the devotion 
of these children of God. The message of the gospel 
goes straight to their hearts and it strangely stirs them. 
"These peoples are by nature eloquent," says a mis- 
sionary in the Philippines. "As the truths of God's 
word sink deeper into them, and as the Spirit of God 
in answer to earnest prayer reveals his wonderful love 
and salvation, they forget themselves and speak with 
a power that astonishes their countrymen. We have 
never attended greater spiritual feasts than their 
weekly prayer-meetings. These simple people take 
God at his word, and he honors their faith." 

One of the most touching instances of the char- 
acter of the Christian and its far-reaching influence 
is enshrined in one of the last places where one would 
have expected to find it, the Memoirs of Lt Hung 
Chang. How could a humble believer impress the 
mighty Viceroy and Grand Councilor of the Chinese 
Empire? The world knew nothing of the circum- 
stances till the diary of the Viceroy was published and 
then it read this moving narrative : 

"July 28. — I cannot think that all people are bad, 
for to-day I had an experience that makes me think 
that, outside of riches and honors, there are small hap- 
penings which touch a man's heart and make him feel 



90 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

that humanity is not all iron and gain and falsehood. 
For to-day this yamen, which for twenty-four years 
had been mine, was the destination of a great mission 
such as never came within the compound before. I 
nearly wept to receive them. Two native Christians 
all the way from that miserable town in Japan to bring 
me here medicines for my head and to see if I was 
getting better! I wonder if this is because Christianity 
teaches such things? It must be some new ideas that 
this man and boy got into their heads to make them do 
such a thing. . . . His name, he said, was Sato, 
and the boy that accompanied him was his thirteen- 
year-old son. Sato said that all the native Christians 
in the little mission at Ketuki, near Moji- — the mis- 
sion that had at first sent the delegation to my sick- 
room with flowers — had talked about me every day 
since I was there and had prayed to the Christian God 
for my recovery. 

"Then he explained that all his friends were very 
anxious to know how I was getting along. Some- 
times, he said, they would hear that I was entirely 
well, and again it would be reported that I was dead; 
so they couldn't stand the uncertainty any longer, 
and collected money between them and sent Sato with 
a message of good-will and some herb medicines. 

"I took the medicines and had my two visitors served 
with the nicest kind of boiled chicken, some chicken 
tongue on crackers, rice, cakes, and tea. I wanted 
them to stay with me for a few days, telling them 
that I would treat them well; but Mr. Sato said he 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 91 

was already almost sick unto death to get back home, 
and that he had once or twice nearly turned back, 
especially as his son was so lonely. When they were 
ready to go, I gave them a big bundle of presents of all 
kinds for their friends back at Ketuki, two hundred 
taels 1 for the mission, and as much more to reimburse 
them for the outlay of the journey. This last he did 
not want to accept, saying that as he had funds suf- 
ficient to take him home he was fearful that the friends 
who had sent him might not like it. But I prevailed 
upon him to take the money. 

"I think this Christianity makes poor and lowly 
people bold and unafraid, for before Mr. Sato and 
his boy left he wanted tQ know if they might pray 
for me. I said they could, expecting that he meant 
when they got back home again; but he said some- 
thing to the little son, and they knelt right there at 
the door and said a prayer. I could not keep my heart 
from thumping in my bosom as I watched that poor 
man and his frightened little boy praying to God — the 
God that will deal with me and with them and all 
mankind — that I might be well of my injuries. I was 
sorry to see them go. 

"In this old yamen, which for twenty odd years was 
mine, strange scenes have been enacted, great councils 
held, and midnight conferences affecting the whole 
world have taken place. I have received royalties and 
dukes, ambassadors, ministers, murderers, robbers, and 
beggars. Men have been sentenced to death from 

x The tael has a value of about 65 cents. 



92 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

here, others have been made glad with leases of lands, 
railroad contracts, or the gift of public office. But 
during each and every occurrence, whatever its nature, 
I have been complete master of my house and myself 
— until an hour ago. Then it was that for the first 
time did I believe the favor was being conferred upon 
me. 

"Poor, good Mr. Sato, all the way from Japan to 
offer a Christian prayer for the 'heathen' old Viceroy ! 
I did not know that any one outside my own family 
cared enough about me for such a thing. I do not 
love the Japanese, but perhaps Christianity would help 
them!" 1 

Endurance. Fortitude under persecution is a su- 
preme test. Many Christians in Asia and Africa have 
suffered grievously for their faith. Chinese believers 
have given examples of constancy in suffering which 
the world will not soon forget. Their behavior under 
the baptism of blood and fire to which they were sub- 
jected in the Boxer uprising bore eloquent testimony 
to the genuineness of their faith. Could American 
Christians have endured such a strain without flinch- 
ing? Let those who can worship God in safety be 
thankful that they have never been subjected to that 
supreme test. But the fortitude of the persecuted 
Chinese believers was so remarkable that in many 
cases the Boxers cut out the hearts of their victims to 
find the secret of such sublime faith. The blood of 
those heroic men and women will forever silence the 



1 Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, 1 18-122. 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 93 

flippant charge that the Chinese are "rice Christians." 
Insincere believers do not die for their faith when 
recantation would save their lives. 

When Asaad Shidiak, a Syrian Maronite and former 
secretary of the Patriarch, declared his faith in Christ, 
the Patriarch first tried persuasion and the bribe of 
promotion and then the threat of excommunication. 
When Asaad Shidiak stood fast, his marriage was 
annulled, his relatives turned him over to the angry 
Patriarch, who threw him into jail, put heavy chains 
on his wrists and ankles, and gave him the alternative 
of kissing an image in token of repentance or kissing 
burning coals. He chose the burning coals, pressed 
them to his lips, and with a scorched and blackened 
mouth returned to his cell. At length they built around 
him a wall, leaving but a small aperture through which 
he could get breath and they could pass him enough 
food to keep him alive and so prolong his sufferings. 

"They killed the body," said Arthur T. Pierson, 
"but, before it gave up the ghost, Asaad Shidiak, the 
Maronite martyr, had proved to them that they could 
not subdue the spirit of one whom the Lord had led 
into the clear light of his own truth and the fellowship 
of his dear Son." 

The Rev. C. W. Briggs, a Baptist missionary in 
Jaro, tells of Piementel, a Filipino Christian, who was 
seized by Filipino officials and locked up in a dungeon. 
While he was asleep, some Filipino policemen came 
into his cell and clubbed him with the butts of their 
guns, fracturing his skull, breaking his cheek bones 



94 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

and crushing in his forehead. They finally left him 
for dead. In the morning he was still conscious, and 
an American doctor taking pity on him, took him to 
the hospital, raised the sunken bones as far as pos- 
sible, and after two or three months, poor Piementel 
was again able to get back to his home. This is the 
man about whom the people gathered at Barotac as he 
preached the gospel. His face is terribly disfigured 
and his head broken, but a look of divine joy shines 
in his countenance in spite of the scars. 

Types of Experience. It is interesting to note the 
various types of religious experience that are develop- 
ing. Differing temperaments, environments, and na- 
tional conditions are influencing not only the methods 
of the missionary but the faith and life of the Christian. 
The missionaries in each country have felt that the 
character and trend of the native mind with which they 
had to deal called for special emphasis upon certain 
doctrines, which, while not at variance with evangelical 
doctrines that some other missionaries w r ere emphasiz- 
ing, were different from them. The range of New 
Testament teaching is wide, and each national group of 
Christians, like each individual believer, instinctively 
appropriates the truths which impress them as best 
adapted to their needs. The despairing, poverty- 
stricken, emotional Korean approaches Christ from a 
different angle than the proud, martial, ambitious 
Japanese. Korean and Japanese types of Christianity 
are therefore quite different, and the missionaries in 
each country, even of the same communions, have 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 95 

been more or less unconsciously molded accordingly. 
In like manner we find characteristic types among the 
mystical East Indians, the practical Chinese, the child- 
like Africans, the easy-going Siamese, the restless 
Arabians, the dignified Persians, the subject Nestor- 
ians, and the warlike Turks, A fascinating book 
might be written on these and other varieties of Chris- 
tian experience. But however distinct the types, the 
composite of them all is slowly but surely forming 
under the common influence of growing knowledge, of 
closer relations in this era of international communi- 
cation, and, above all, of the common guidance of the 
Spirit of God. In far separated lands they dwell. 
Many languages voice their spiritual aspirations. 
Darkness still covers their earth and gross darkness 
their peoples. But the Lord has arisen upon them and 
his glory is already seen upon them. 1 

Roll of Honor 

One could wish that the limits of this book would 
permit an adequate account of some outstanding 
Asiatic and African Christians. 

Earlier Lives. We suggest that the reader look up 
such sketches as that of the Moslem Kamil 2 whom 
Henry H. Jessup characterized as a Christian ©f 
apostolic devotion and beauty of character; the Syrian 
Habeeb 3 whose story is told by William S. Nelson; 
Honda, the first Japanese Methodist Bishop 4 ; Joseph 

*Isa. ix. i, 2. 7 KamiL 

8 Habeeb the Beloved. 
'Griffis, William E., Honda. 



96 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Hardy Neesima, 1 the founder of the Doshisha; Paul, 
the Apostle of the Congo 2 ; Old Wang 3 ; and Pastor 
Hsi 4 of China; Chundra Lela, 5 the devoted evangelist 
in India; Tiyo Soga, 6 of South Africa, and Bishop 
Crowther 7 of the Niger. 

Present Generation. Of the present generation, 
we must place high on the roll of great Christian lead- 
ers such men as Ding Li Mei, "the Apostle Paul of 
China"; Elijah Makiwane, the able and cultured Kafir 
of South Africa 8 ; Azariah, the first native Anglican 
Bishop in India; the patriarchal Chatterjee, Moderator 
of the First Presbyterian General Assembly of India; 
Noboru Watanabe, Japanese Chief Justice of the Su- 
preme Court of Korea ; Dr. Fasuka Harada, President 
of the Doshisha; Uemura, the great preacher, editor, 
and theologian of Tokyo ; Lu Bi Cu, physician in 
China; Francis Kingsbury, associate evangelist of 
Mr. Eddy in India ; C. T. Wang, statesman and Chris- 
tian worker in China; Pastor Kil, Korean evangelist; 
Yun Chi Ho, the Korean patriot and Christian edu- 
cator; and Dr. Rhee, educator in Korea. 

And what more shall I say? For the time would 



^ardy, Arthur S., Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima. 
2 Richards, Henry, "Paul the Apostle of Banza Manteke." 
*Ross, J., Old Wang: First Chinese Evangelist in Manchuria. 
4 Taylor, Mrs. H., Pastor Hsu 
B Griffin, Z. F., Chundra Lela. 
e Cousins, H. T., Tiyo Soga. 
7 Page, J., The Black Bishop. 

8 Article, "Notable Native Pioneers," United Free Church 
Missionary Magazine, April, 1914. 




u 




in 



< 



CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH 97 

fail me to call the roll of those whom God is raising 
up to lead his people in the era that is swiftly coming 
in the lands that are now called non-Christian. 

If, as Amiel said, "the test of every religious, polit- 
ical, or educational system is the man which it forms/' 
Christianity is meeting the test in the mission field. 

Safe Grounds of Judgment. As I close this chapter, 
I realize that my description of the Christians in the 
mission field has not included an account of their im- 
perfections. They have them. But I confess that, 
as I think of my brethren in non-Christian lands, I 
do not find myself in a critical mood. They are so 
much better than we might have expected them to be, 
they are witnessing for Christ in such difficult condi- 
tions and with such patience and courage and love, 
that criticism is disarmed. If you want to know what 
their failings are, ask yourself what yours are. They 
are the same and you can catalog them at your leisure. 

But surely our Master who tempers his judgments 
with kindly consideration of circumstances, who knows 
our frame and remembers that we are dust, will deal 
more mercifully with the Christians in the mission field 
than he will with us ; for some of these also have come 
out of great tribulation, and they shall be among those 
who stand before the throne of God forever. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 
OF THE CHURCH 

Statistics are said to be dry. If they are, it is be- 
cause we do not stop to consider what they mean. 
Missionary statistics throb with life. They tabulate 
the visible results of years of devoted toil by men and 
women of whom the world is not worthy. 

General Survey 

Statistical Data Difficult. Accuracy in such sta- 
tistics is peculiarly difficult. It is not easy to collect 
reliable data of churches in America. The task is 
enormously increased when we deal with churches in 
many widely separated lands, which are under a dis- 
tracting variety of organizations, and whose affilia- 
tions are with hundreds of different agencies whose 
methods of computation are not uniform. Moreover, 
the rapidity of growth in some fields is so great that 
figures are often out of date by the time they can be 
published. The most careful work on this subject is 
done by the Special Committee on Statistics of the Con- 
tinuation Committee and the Committee on the Home 
Base of the Foreign Missions Conference of North 
America. 

99 



100 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Some World Totals. The latest obtainable reports 1 
give 3,167,614 communicants; 130,262 native min- 
isters, evangelists, teachers, and other workers; and 
1,869,145 enrolled in Sunday-schools. This indicates a 
Christian community, including communicants, Sun- 
day-school children, other members of Christian fam- 
ilies, and adherents, of 7,253,836. These figures do not 
include multitudes who have been more or less defi- 
nitely influenced by the Christian movement, some of 
whom are willing to be known as Christians as distin- 
guished from men of other religions. The government 
census of India, to be noted presently, is an instance 
of this. 

No Padded Returns. These statistics afford splen- 
did evidence that churches of no mean strength have 
been developed in the mission field. The churches are 
stronger than the figures indicate, for allowance must 
be made for the conservatism of missionaries in enroll- 
ing converts. They know that supporters at home 
want reports of large accessions; but previous expe- 
rience has taught caution. An applicant for baptism 
does not always clearly understand what Christianity 
means. Sometimes, too, unworthy motives exist — 
hope of employment or desire to secure the foreigner's 
assistance in some quarrel or lawsuit. As a rule, there- 
fore, a native who seeks admission to the Church is 
not immediately received into full membership. He 
is enrolled as an inquirer or prospective member, kept 

Reports for 1914 for the main divisions, with the addition of 
figures for 1912 for the less important divisions. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 101 

under instruction and observation for a period vary- 
ing from six months to a year or more, and he is not 
reported as a communicant until time has demonstrated 
the genuineness of his Christian life. And yet as 
distinct a confession of faith is required for enrolment 
as a beginning member as churches in America demand 
for full membership. For this reason, the number of 
Christians in a mission field is considerably greater 
than the reported list of communicants, often double 
that list. 

Remarkable Progress. The rate of progress is 
remarkable. The natural presumption would be that 
Christianity would gain very slowly in lands where 
it is regarded with suspicion as an alien faith, opposed 
by a powerful priesthood, and at variance with long- 
established customs and deeply rooted prejudices. 

It would not be reasonable, therefore, to expect as 
rapid increase as in America, where centuries of Chris- 
tian activity have created conditions more favorable 
to the spread of Christianity, where a confession of 
faith is safe and easy and where it is often to one's 
business or social advantage to join the Church. It 
took three hundred years for Christianity to make even 
a nominal conversion of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. 
Protestant foreign missionary work is but a little over 
a hundred years old. In a large part of the non- 
Christian world it is not half a century old, while some 
important fields have been occupied within two decades. 
What justice is there in expecting large immediate 
results in such circumstances? 



102 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Home and Foreign Increase. But what are the 
comparative facts? The average annual increase in 
the Protestant churches in America is two per cent., 
while the increase on the foreign field is seven per cent. 
One large board reports in a decade a net gain of 
eighty-two per cent, in the number of churches and a 
hundred and sixty per cent, in the number of communi- 
cants. Grant that mere numbers are not always a fair 
test of success, and that in some important mission 
fields the number of converts is yet small. Taking the 
work as a whole we have reason for mighty encourage- 
ment and for gratitude to God. The advance in some 
fields has been wonderful. It is a story of toil and self- 
sacrifice, of magnificent courage, of superb loyalty to 
the truth of God. Within the first hundred years of 
modern missions the number of Christians in the mis- 
sion field was at least twice as large as the number of 
Christians in the whole world at the end of the first 
century of the Christian era. 

Consider also that a large part of the work thus far 
has consisted of clearing the ground and laying foun- 
dations. The degree of achievement must be estimated 
not only by the results that can be seen but by the pros- 
pect for the future. The pioneer stage is usually the 
slowest. The American nation looked very small and 
poor to European eyes for half a century after the 
Declaration of Independence, and it was not until a 
century had passed that it attained a magnitude that 
challenged the respect of the world. Compare the prog- 
ress that Christianity has made in non-Christian lands 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 103 

during the last century with the progress that was 
made during the first century of Christian work 
in England, and we shall find no reason for 
discouragement, but, on the contrary, abundant rea- 
son for thanksgiving. Critics assert that the rate 
ought to be greater in these modern times when the 
Christian movement on the foreign field is the projec- 
tion of a powerful Church at the home base which is 
able to equip it as the early Christians were not 
equipped. Critics find it hard to be consistent, for they 
also allege with mournful joy that the modern Church 
is inefficient as compared with the apostolic Church. 

Apostolic and Present-Day Growth. The latter 
criticism is so common and is believed to be true by so 
many in the home churches that it may be well to 
examine it more closely. We are told of "the amazing 
vitality of the early Church and the comparative im- 
potence of the Church of our day," and we are urged 
to consider the reasons for our decadence. No real 
attempt is made to prove the hypothesis ; it is taken for 
granted as if it were beyond dispute, and an elaborate 
edifice of pessimism and appeal is built upon it. Some 
of my own former writings include sentences which 
might be construed in the same way. Further reflec- 
tion has led me to doubt the validity of this line of 
argument. 

The conversion of three thousand in a day, recorded 
in the Acts of the Apostles, is still unmatched either 
at home or abroad ; but where else in the New Testa- 
ment were there mightier manifestations of God's sav- 



104 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

ing power than in Uganda with its 24,387 con- 
verts in six years (1897-1902)? In Burma the 
Karens have amazed the world by the vigor and fruit- 
fulness of their faith. In the Telugu Mission, the 
Ongole Church with its branches attained a member- 
ship of 32,000 communicants, no less than 10,000 of 
whom were baptized in the single year of 1878, while 
at Podili, in the same year, six native ministers bap- 
tized 2,222 in one day. In Aneitium of the New 
Hebrides John Geddie's memorial tablet reads: 
"When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians; 
when he left in 1872 there were no heathens." More 
than twenty years ago, Arthur T. Piejrson wrote a 
little book entitled The Nezv Acts of the Apostles. It 
is packed with evidences that the Holy Spirit has been 
working in these modem times in ways which would 
have gladdened the heart of Paul. If that account were 
brought down to date, it would include many other 
marvelous manifestations of spiritual power. We 
shall cite some recent examples in a later part of this 
chapter. Suffice it to say that Eastern Asia is as hard 
a mission field as the Roman empire ever was; but 
more converts have been made there in the last sixty- 
five years than were made in the Roman empire within 
sixty-five years after the death of Christ. "Compar- 
ative impotence of the Church of our day," indeed ! 

Spirit of Modern Leaders. Surely it is not a sign 
of faith to argue that our Lord is failing to accom- 
plish his purpose. He came to establish a Kingdom, 
and acceleration of development is therefore a normal 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 105 

expectation. Wonderful is the account of Christian 
devotion in the apostolic age. We read with reverent 
joy of those early disciples of whom men "took knowl- 
edge . . . that they had been with Jesus." But 
what shall we say of Count Zinzendorf who said: "I 
have one passion and that is Christ ;" of Henry 
Marty n who joyously exclaimed : "I am born for God 
only, I do not wish for any heaven on earth besides 
that of preaching the precious gospel to immortal 
souls ;" of Gerald Dale who so visibly walked with God 
during his brief missionary life that the fanatical 
peoples of Syria wept when he died and still venerate 
his memory as a saint; of David Livingstone who 
wrote in his diary on his fifty-ninth birthday: "My 
Jesus, my King, my Life, my All, I again dedicate my 
whole self to thee; accept me and grant, O gracious 
Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my task ;" 
of Jonathan Wilson of whom a German scientist, who 
had been traveling in northern Siam, said to a com- 
pany of clubmen who had been scoffing at missionaries : 
"I do not profess to be a religious man, but I tell you 
that that good old missionary, with whom I spent sev- 
eral weeks in the jungles of Laos, is more like Jesus 
Christ than any other man I ever knew." The modern 
missionary is writing the name of Jesus large across 
the sky of Asia. He is making Jesus' standard the 
inexorable test of men and nations. He is making the 
divine voice the deep undertone of human life. Un- 
doubtedly some missionaries are inefficient and some 
erratic; but the typical missionary, as I have had op- 



106 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

portunity to know him in twenty years of secretarial 
service and two journeys to Asia, is an apostle through 
whom the Spirit of God is communicating regenerat- 
ing power to the non-Christian world. 

Enlightenment and Philanthropy. In estimating 
the present strength and influence of the Church we 
must take into consideration not merely numbers but 
evidences of other kinds that cannot be easily tabu- 
lated. Is the work of our home churches to be judged 
solely by the number of converts? What shall we say 
on the foreign field of the new forces that have been 
liberated, of the purification of society, the healing of 
the sick, the education of the young, the new standards 
of truth and of duty? The enlightening and philan- 
thropic influence of Christian missions is enormous. 
At the beginning of the nineteenth century an officer of 
the British East India Company exclaimed : "The send- 
ing of missionaries into our eastern possessions is the 
maddest, most expensive, most unwarranted project 
that was ever proposed by a lunatic enthusiasm.'' At 
the end of the century, the good results were so evident 
that the British Lieutenant-governor of Bengal said: 
"In my judgment Christian missionaries have done 
more lasting good to the people of India than all other 
agencies combined." 

The Japan Daily Mail reported Count Okuma, the 
greatest statesman of Japan, as saying, in Tokyo, at 
the semi-centennial of Protestant missions : "The suc- 
cess of Christian work in Japan can be measured by 
the extent to which it has been able to infuse the Anglo- 




GROUP OF LEPERS 
GROUP OF INSANE 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 107 

Saxon and the Christian spirit into the nation. It has 
been the means of putting into these fifty years an 
advance equivalent to that of one hundred years. 
Japan has a history of 2,500 years, but only by the 
coming of the West in its missionary representatives 
and by the spread of the gospel did the nation enter 
upon world-wide thoughts and world-wide work. This 
is a great result of the Christian spirit/' 

Hundreds of similar tributes and innumerable illus- 
trations might be cited. Native officials are as out- 
spoken as foreigners in recognizing the beneficent work 
of Christian missions. Several Asiatic governments 
have followed the advice of missionaries in adopting 
vaccination to reduce the ravages of smallpox, in pro- 
viding for the care of lepers, and in enforcing regu- 
lations for the suppression of epidemics. When pneu- 
monic plague broke out in northern China, the author- 
ities immediately turned to the medical missionaries, 
asked them to take command of the situation, and 
placed at their disposal an unlimited supply of money 
and helpers ; the result being that the disease was soon 
stamped out. 

Pestilence in Manchuria. Five hundred Chinese 
coolies, who had been working in the bean fields of 
Manchuria, started back to their homes in southern 
China about Christmas. Pneumonic plague broke out 
among them, and they were stopped near Mukden and 
huddled into five small buildings. Dr. A. F. Jackson, 
a young missionary of the Scotch Presbyterian Mis- 
sion, volunteered to go into quarantine with the terrified 



108 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

men. He was the only white man in that foul pest 
center. Eighty of the coolies died, and then their phy- 
sician and defender himself contracted the disease. 
When he discovered that the infection had laid hold 
of him, he tried to hide himself in order that no other 
physician might run the risk of contracting the plague 
in attending him ; but his plight was discovered by fel- 
low missionaries who hastened to him in spite of the 
danger, and did all in their power to save his life. The 
pneumonic form of this terrific scourge, however, is 
almost invariably fatal, and the young Scotchman's 
martyrdom was soon complete. His Excellency, the 
Viceroy of Manchuria, Hsi Liang, with his staff, at- 
tended a memorial service in Mukden, and he made the 
following solemn oration: 

"We have shown ourselves unworthy of the trust 
laid upon us by our Emperor; we have allowed a dire 
pestilence to overrun the sacred capital. His Majesty, 
the king of Great Britain, shows sympathy with every 
country when calamity overtakes it. His loyal subject, 
Dr. Jackson, moved by his sovereign's spirit and with 
the heart of Christ who died to save the world, re- 
sponded nobly when we besought him to help our 
country in its time of need. He went forth to help 
us daily where the pest lay the thickest; in the midst 
of the groans of the dying, he struggled to cure the 
stricken, to find medicine to stay the dreadful disease. 
Worn by his efforts, the pest seized upon him and took 
him from us long before his time. Our sorrow is be- 
yond all measure, our grief too deep for words. Dr. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 109 

Jackson was a young man of high education and great 
natural ability. He came to Manchuria with the 
intention of spreading medical knowledge and thus 
conferring untold blessings on the eastern people. In 
pursuit of his ideal, he was cut down. The Presby- 
terian Mission has lost a recruit of great promise, the 
Chinese government a man who gave his life in his 
desire to help them. O spirit of Dr. Jackson! we 
pray you to intercede for the twenty million people of 
Manchuria and ask the Lord of heaven to take away 
this pest so we may once more lay our heads upon 
our pillows in* peace! In life you were brave; now 
you are a spirit. Noble spirit, who sacrificed your 
life for us, help us still and look down in kindness 
upon us all I" 

Royal Testimony. Among the Siamese, the number 
of conversions has been comparatively small, but the 
social results of missionary effort have been unusually 
large. Indeed it is probable that Christianity has had 
deeper effect upon the general policy and public senti- 
ment of the country than in many lands where church- 
members are more numerous. The regent remarked in 
1 871 to the Hon. George F. Seward, then American 
consul-general at Shanghai, that "Siam had not been 
disciplined by English and French guns as China, but 
that the country had been opened by missionaries.' ' 
The reforms inaugurated by the late king were directly 
traceable to the influence of the missionaries. The 
ruler of a country in which Buddhism is the state reli- 
gion, he did not hesitate to adopt the suggestions which 



110 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

the Christian teachers made. He showed his appre- 
ciation of missionary work by granting full religious 
toleration and by assigning valuable property to mis- 
sion work at a nominal value and several times for 
nothing. He went further and personally made gen- 
erous gifts to enlarge the mission hospital and school 
at Petchaburi, the. mission hospital at Nakawn, and he 
headed a list of donors for a new site for the Bangkok 
Christian College, over eighty of his princes and nobles 
adding their names. The queen gave the money for a 
women's ward for the Petchaburi hospital, and for the 
"queen's scholarship fund" at the girls' school in Bang- 
kok. The present king is continuing the liberal policy 
of his illustrious father, and shortly before his acces- 
sion to the throne, he laid the corner-stone of the mis- 
sion college in Chieng-mai. 

Students of thrs phase of the influence of Chris- 
tianity in Asia will find a rich store of material in the 
volumes of Drs. Dennis, Capen, and Faunce, to which 
reference is made on page 168. 

Specific Fields 

It may be of interest to speak more particularly of 
the present strength and influence of the Church in 
several typical mission fields. Our space limits will 
not permit an enumeration of all of them; but we can 
mention some representative ones. 

Korea. Although it w r as not until 1886 that the first 
Korean was baptized, Korea now has a Christian 
Church whose membership, including enrolled provi- 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 111 

sional members, approaches a quarter of a million, 
exclusive of adherents and baptized children. Many 
stations have histories which, though covering but a 
few years, are crowded with inspiring facts. When 
I visited the country in 1901, I was stirred by the 
wonder of the movement. Eight years later, I found 
no sign of abatement but rather signs of increasing 
power. Revival after revival has swept over the land. 
Recent years have brought heavy strain in changing 
material conditions, but the churches continue to grow. 
Who can read unmoved the following statements of 
a missionary regarding one of the six missions in 
Korea: thirty years ago not one Christian; now over 
100,000 in his Church alone? The average net in- 
crease for thirteen years is 38 per cent. In the 591 
primary schools 10,916 boys and 2,511 girls are study- 
ing. This one mission has added an average of 6,980 
communicants a year for five years. 

The Rev. D. A. Bunker, of another mission, says : 
"Work along all lines goes forward so fast that we 
can hardly keep within sight of the van. At every 
chapel, candidates for baptism are awaiting us: 611 
new names have been added to the list of believers in 
the past ten days." 

Japan. Japan, which received its first Protestant 
missionary in 1859, now has 857 organized churches 
with a membership, including enrolled beginners, 
of 102,790. There are 728 ordained Japanese min- 
isters, 713 unordained Christian workers, and over a 
hundred thousand scholars in 1,875 Sunday-schools. 



112 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Five thousand students are attending Christian board- 
ing-schools, and eight thousand children are attending 
one hundred kindergartens and other day schools. 
Four hundred candidates for the ministry are being- 
trained in theological colleges, and three hundred and 
fifty women in Bible training-schools. 

The influence of Christianity extends far beyond the 
reported lists of communicants. A professor of the 
Imperial University in Tokyo declares that "at least 
a million Japanese outside the Christian Church have 
so come to understand Christianity that, though as yet 
unbaptized, they are framing their lives according to 
the teachings of Christ." Another Japanese says in a 
published article : "Christianity is taking hold of the 
Japanese people far more strongly than the mission- 
aries imagine. And I am confident that Christianity is 
now slowly but steadily taking the place of Confucian- 
ism as the family religion of the Japanese." 

The Rev. William Imbrie of Tokyo said in a semi- 
centennial address: "Fifty years ago notice-boards 
were standing on the highways declaring Christianity 
a forbidden religion; to-day these same notice-boards 
are standing in the museum in Tokyo as things of his- 
torical interest. Fifty years ago religious liberty was 
a phrase not yet minted in Japan; to-day it is written 
in the Constitution of the nation. Even forty years 
ago there was not an organized church in all Japan ; to- 
day there are Synods and Conferences and Asso- 
ciations with congregations dotting the empire from 
Hokkaido to Formosa, and men of high position 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 113 

in the nation cordially recognize the fact that Chris- 
tianity in Japan has won for itself a place worthy of 
recognition." 

The Bible was a prohibited book in Japan for some 
time after the missionaries arrived. But six million 
copies of the Bible and Bible portions have been cir- 
culated during the last thirty years. The demand is 
still so great that 9,121 Bibles, 101,589 Testaments, 
and 391,666 portions were sold in 19 13. The Word 
of God is the best-selling book in Japan to-day. 

We would not make too much of these facts. Japan 
is still far from being a Christian nation. The ob- 
stacles yet to be surmounted are numerous and formi- 
dable. But it is indisputable that Christian ideas are 
permeating the literature and the thinking of Japan to 
a far greater extent than is commonly realized. Who 
can tell haw much of the development of modern 
Japan was influenced by missionaries? The prime 
minister, Count Okuma, has publicly testified that he 
could never forget the influence of the Rev. Guido 
F. Verbeck, who was his teacher in history, English, 
and the Bible; and Count Hayashi, formerly minister 
for foreign affairs, was equally outspoken in acknowl- 
edging the impulse that he received as one of the boys 
whom Dr. James C. Hepburn taught in a little class 
half a century ago. The Rev. Daniel Crosby Greene 
wrote, shortly before his lamented death, that "hardly 
ever before in any land, has Christianity borne riper 
or more varied fruit at so early a stage in its history." 

China. We have seen in a former chapter how 



114 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

formidable were the obstacles which Christianity en- 
countered in China. In 1834, twenty-seven years after 
Morrison's arrival, there were only three converts, 
and in 1842 only six. In 1900, there were 113,000. 
To-day, only about a century after the first Chinese 
convert was baptized by a Protestant missionary, 
China has a Church of 370,114 communicants. The 
Rev. J. Campbell Gibson, of Swatow, says that "the 
great achievement of the first century of Protestant 
missions in China has been the planting of the Chinese 
Church. This body of Christians, with its equipment 
of gathered spiritual experience; of Bible, hymnology, 
and Christian literature; its places of worship; its 
churches, schools, colleges, hospitals, and printing- 
presses; its ordinances of worship; its discipline of 
prayer; and its habits of family and personal religion; 
with its martyrology, and its gathered memories of 
gracious living and holy dying — this is the wonderful 
fruit which one hundred yeare have left in our hands." 
The change in the attitude of the Chinese government 
and people toward the Christian Church is highly 
significant. Until recent years, Christians were re- 
garded with a contempt which ranged from indiffer- 
ence to a hostility which found expression in persecu- 
tion. Officials and gentry either ignored them or made 
them feel the heavy hand of displeasure. To-day, 
Christians are everywhere regarded with respect. 
While the bulk of the membership of the Church still 
comes from the humbler classes, there is an increasing 
number of educated men. The Revolution of 191 1 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 115 

marked a new era in religion as well as in politics. 
President Yuan Shih-kai has repeatedly expressed his 
sympathetic interest in Christian work, and thousands 
of lesser officials have taken their cue from him. After 
his accession to the presidency, a deputation of five 
Chinese pastors begged the privilege of presenting a 
memorial, assuring him of their prayers for his wel- 
fare and of their hope that the new government would 
proclaim full religious toleration. They had not 
ventured to believe that they could see him, but had 
expected that their memorial would have to be sent 
through official channels. But, when they arrived at 
the palace, they were ushered into the presence of 
Yuan Shih-kai himself. He received them kindly, 
served tea, listened attentively to the reading of their 
memorial and then made a sympathetic reply. When 
they took leave, he sent salutations to their churches, 
and ordered his guards to present arms and the mili- 
tary band to play. So these ambassadors of Jesus 
Christ left with distinguished honors the palace grounds 
whose outermost gate they would not have been per- 
mitted to enter a year before. It would not be easy to 
overestimate the significance of the change which this 
indicates in the attitude of China toward the Christian 
Church. 

India. One of the surprises revealed by the govern- 
ment census of India was the number of persons who 
reported themselves to the official census-takers as 
Christians. The London Times wonderingly com- 
mented in a leading editorial: "There are 3,574,000 



116 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

native Christians in India, apart from Eurasian Chris- 
tians. The Roman Catholics still have first place, with 
1,394,000 adherents; but the advance of Roman Ca- 
tholicism in the decade is surprisingly small compared 
with Protestant progress. In the ten years the Protes- 
tant Christians have increased by nearly half a million, 
compared with the 272,000 increase among Catholics. 
The Baptists have grown in numbers from 217,000 to 
332,171 and are now only a few hundred behind the 
Anglicans, who take first place with 332,807, an in- 
crease of 26,000 in the period. Congregationalists 
have made very marked numerical progress, especially 
in southern India, and they now have 134,000, an in- 
crease of 97,000 in ten years. The Presbyterians have 
added 121,000, and the Methodists 94,000. The total 
Christian population of India is now nearly four mil- 
lions, or about one in every eighty of the 315,000,000 
living in the great dependency.' ' The census further 
showed that, during the preceding decade, while the 
population of the country had increased 6.4 per cent., 
the rate of increase of the various religions was as 
follows : Hindus, five per cent. ; Mohammedans, six 
per cent. ; Buddhists, thirteen per cent. ; Christians, 
thirty-three per cent. In the Punjab, the Christian 
increase was 446 per cent. 

When Bishop Thoburn organized the Methodist 
mission in 1859, there were one native member, six 
probationers, and four inquirers. By 1886, he was 
able to say : "We are now face to face with the most 
perplexing responsibilities. Twenty-five thousand per- 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 117 

sons are to-day standing outside our doors, willing^ 
and waiting to receive the word which God has in- 
trusted to us for them/' 

One looks with wonder not unmixed with awe upon 
"the mass movement" among the low-caste people of 
India. These depressed, half-starved classes, despised 
by the higher castes, really outcastes, are turning to 
God in multitudes. The Methodist Northwest India 
Conference has baptized 115,000 in twenty years, and 
is adding to its numbers at the rate of ten thousand a 
year. Other communions also report great accessions. 
The movement is spreading so rapidly as to encourage 
the hope that it will ultimately reach the majority of 
the sixty millions of low-caste inhabitants of India. 1 

Every one is familiar with the striking words of 
Lord Lawrence: "It is Christ that rules British India." 
Sir Andrew H. L. Fraser, formerly Lieutenant- 
governor of Bengal, says: "I have seen the Indian 
Church grow from infancy, when it seemed impos- 
sible to let it take a step alone and without guidance, 
into a comparatively strong church. To me the results 
of Christian missions are not small or discouraging; 
they are important and of the highest promise. Such 
efforts as have been put forth by the churches have 
been crowned with wonderful success. No one who 
has taken any trouble to study the question, to see the 
the work itself, to judge the character of those who 

1 For some account of this movement, cf. the article, "Christ- 
ward Mass Movements in India," by Thomas S. Donohugh, in 
the Methodist Review, Nov.-Dec, 1913. 



118 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

have been really won to the Christian religion, can 
fail to recognize how wonderful the results have been, 
both in regard to the numbers of true converts and 
also in regard to the elevation of their character." 1 

Africa. Africa presents many instances of the 
splendid strength and influence which the Church is 
exerting even in that continent so darkened by ages 
of ignorance and superstition. 20,782 persons at- 
tended a regular communion service at Elat and its 
neighboring out-stations, 8,120 of them being at the 
central church. At Fulasi, seventy miles distant, 5,100 
were present at a similar service. It is inspiring to 
think of such great congregations, assembled for the 
most part in the open air, for no building could hold 
such hosts, lifting their voices in glad songs of praise, 
and then reverently partaking together of the symbols 
of their Lord's death upon the cross. The net gain in 
the West Africa Mission in the Kameruns has been 
a thousand per cent, in the last three years. 

The story of Uganda is well known. Henry M. 
Stanley called it "an epic poem. ,, Some one else has 
characterized it as "a pageant of salvation.'' In a 
country where, at first, persecution was ferocious and 
every condition appeared to be most hopeless, there are 
great churches thronged with devout worshipers, 
churches which are self-governing, self-supporting, 
and self -propagating. Remember that "in this con- 
tinent the missionaries are not working with civilized 
people, like those of India, China, and Japan, but with 

1 Among Indian Rajahs and Ryots, 268-270. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 119 

the rudest barbarians. They are dealing with the raw 
material of the human race. The remarkable thing is 
that, in one generation or less, whole tribes can be 
lifted from the lowest barbarism, through all the inter- 
vening stages of social evolution, and placed on a 
fairly high plane of living. Individual transformations 
of character read like tales from our New Testament. 
The missionaries in Africa have proved that, when 
once the spirit of man is freed from the grip of sin, 
the whole nature responds and awakens to new life." 

Siam. The world gives little heed to what is occur- 
ring in the far-off valleys of northern Siam. But God 
is moving with great power among their Lao inhabi- 
tants. The work is comparatively new, but the move- 
ment is becoming notable. In a remote and isolated 
region and with a small missionary force, the Church is 
rapidly advancing in numbers and influence. The First 
Church of Chieng-mai has baptized 1,387 adults in 
three years. It has sent out several colonies to form 
other churches, has twelve outlying chapels and reports 
a membership of 2,083. The net gain in the mission 
was thirty-seven per cent, last year, the number of com- 
municants having increased from 4,618 to 6,299. 

Egypt. The Protestant Church in Egypt grew from 
seventy-seven members in 1864 to twelve thousand 
one hundred and ninety-four members in 1914. The 
average yearly increase for the last decade was 6.6 
per cent. During the same period the average yearly 
increase of the Church in America which maintains the 
cooperating mission in Egypt was 2.2 per cent. 



120 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

South Sea Islands. One cannot think unmoved of 
the manifestations of divine power in the islands of the 
Pacific Ocean. Hawaii, New Guinea, the Hervey 
Group, the New Hebrides, and others that might be 
mentioned, have missionary histories that teem with 
inspiring facts. The novel of adventure is here out- 
done by the actual incidents of cannibal feasts, mid- 
night attacks, and hairbreadth escapes. The autobiog- 
raphies of such missionaries as John G. Paton and 
James Chalmers stir one's blood like the sound of a 
trumpet. To-day, many of these once turbulent tribes 
are orderly and peaceful communities. The traveler 
may "behold the demoniac sitting, clothed and in his 
right mind, even him that had the legion ;" but he need 
not be "afraid," 1 for these men worship God in humil- 
ity and love. 

The Philippines. The missions in the Philippines 
are among the youngest of modern missions. The first 
Protestant missionary did not arrive till 1899. Results 
began to appear almost immediately. The Filipinos, 
moved by the preaching of a pure gospel and by the 
reading of the Bible, which the Spanish friars had 
withheld from them, turned to God in such numbers 
that within half a decade there were numerous 
churches. To-day the number of adult communicants 
is around the fifty thousand mark and every year sees 
further advance. 

Not all fields have been as fruitful as these that have 
been mentioned, but the average rate of progress has 

*Mark v. 15. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 121 

been remarkably good considering all the circum- 
stances. Even in the hardest fields, solid foundations 
have been laid. 

Latin America. The countries that are commonly 
grouped under the name Latin America have presented 
peculiar difficulties. South America has been well 
characterized as "the continent that had a bad start/' 
"with no Mayflower and no Plymouth Rock," but 
with brutal, lustful, avaricious Spanish adventurers. 
Ecuador and Peru are still bitterly intolerant of Prot- 
estant effort. In Mexico, Central America, Colombia, 
and Venezuela, mission work is frequently ham- 
pered by the unsettled conditions of revolutionary tur- 
bulence and by all the obstacles that a corrupt and 
fanatical hierarchy can devise. But Bolivia has reli- 
gious liberty, Chile and the Argentine are progressive 
republics, and Brazil is slowly but noticeably moving 
along the same path. In most of these countries well- 
established churches may be found. They are not yet 
numerous. The total number of Protestant communi- 
cants in all Latin America is only about 100,000. But 
they are making their influence felt. Here and there 
one finds a large and flourishing congregation. A 
church in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has received 1,752 
members since its organization in 1862. It added 120 
last year, of whom 108 were on confession of faith. 
It is enlarging its building of a thousand sittings to 
provide needed accommodation for its growing con- 
gregations. It has six Sunday-schools and seven affili- 
ated congregations, has sent twelve of its members 



122 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

into the ministry and has three more studying, and 
has a Christian Endeavor Society whose members dis- 
tribute tracts in the city and invite people to the serv- 
ices. 

Moslem Lands. Moslem lands have been deemed 
the stoniest ground for Christian seed. We have 
already referred to the fact that for a long time preach- 
ing to Mohammedans was forbidden, that their chil- 
dren were not permitted to attend mission schools, and 
that a convert was in imminent danger of assassina- 
tion. To-day, hundreds of Moslem pupils are attending 
mission schools, converts are becoming more frequent, 
and the walls of prejudice are crumbling in many 
hitherto inaccessible places. The Rev. Henry H. 
Jessup of Beirut, after half a century of missionary 
labor, wrote: "We find public sentiment throughout 
the land revolutionized on the subject of education for 
both sexes ; a vast number of readers raised up among 
all the sects and nationalities ; the pow r er of the hierar- 
chy greatly weakened ; the Bible in thousands of homes ; 
the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut wielding an 
immense influence all over western Asia and north- 
eastern Africa; an increasing demand for the Arabic 
Scriptures; the Syria evangelical churches beginning 
to realize their responsibility; and, in fine, a material, 
intellectual, and moral awakening which is the prepara- 
tion for a new Syria in the new century at hand. ,, 
Substantially similar statements might be made re- 
garding the churches in other parts of the Turkish 
empire and in Egypt and Persia. 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 123 

General Progress. This is an incomplete record of 
the present strength and influence of the churches in 
non-Christian lands. Other interesting fields might be 
described if space permitted. But perhaps those that 
have been mentioned may serve as illustrations of the 
progress that is being made throughout the whole widely 
extended range of Christian operations affecting the 
unevangelized world. 

Statistics have been numerous in this chapter. They 
will soon be out of date and we are glad that they will 
be, for the changes of each year mean that 

"Our God is marching on." 

Their repetition, however, even if only approximately 
correct at a given time, affords one a more definite im- 
pression of the magnitude and variety of the work 
that is being done. "Missionary statistics," as another 
has well said, "gathering up so many years in a few 
pages, are to many people like the valley of dry bones 
to the desponding prophet. But, to him who knows 
their meaning and walks among them, they rise and 
stand upon their feet, clothed with the flesh and blood 
of those whose life-work they represent — their hopes, 
their fears, their doubts, their struggles, their tears, 
their death." 

The Unfinished Task 

Only a Beginning. We would not give the impres- 
sion that the non-Christian world is about to become 
Christian. Vast regions are still untouched, and large 
sections of the population of occupied lands have not 



124 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

yet heard of Christ in a way that would enable them 
to make an intelligent choice. A total of 102,790 
Christians in Japan? But there are 53,000,000 people 
in Japan. As many as 370,114 adult communicants in 
China? How small the number in comparison with a 
total population of 438,000,000! Nearly four million 
East Indians who tell the census-takers that they are 
Christians? We thank God and take courage. But 
shall we be content with one eightieth of India's pop- 
ulation of 315,000,000? And so we might go through 
field after field. Even where the most notable results 
have been achieved, hardly more than a beginning has 
been made. The non-Christian world is not a light 
place with dark spots, but a dark place in which only 
here and there the light is shining. The new world 
conditions, too, while enormously widening our oppor- 
tunity, are creating some new obstacles, intensifying 
some old ones, and demanding greatly increased effort 
on the part of the churches at home. A stupendous 
task still confronts us, a task summoning us to the 
most heroic endeavor, the most unselfish consecra- 
tion, and the most splendid faith. 

Praise, Prayer, Promise. Meantime, as we view the 
progress that has been made against tremendous 
obstacles, and then consider how much remains to be 
done, our thought may well be that of the one hundred 
and twenty-sixth Psalm : thanksgiving for the measure 
of blessing that has already been given — "Jehovah has 
done great things for us, whereof we are glad;" but 
humble, earnest prayer that far richer grace may 



PRESENT STRENGTH AND INFLUENCE 125 

come — "Turn again our captivity, O Jehovah, as the 
streams in the South." Surely God will fulfil his 
promise that "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy" ; 
and that "he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing pre- 
cious seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, bring- 
ing his sheaves with him." 



VI 

SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 

A young church, like a young man, must develop 
certain qualities if it is to perform its proper task in 
the world. Those which relate to spiritual life are 
discussed in another chapter. We discuss here some 
other duties that are prominent in the missionary aim 
and methods. 

Self-Sapport. 

One of the Fundamentals. Self-support is one of 
these characteristics. We emphasize this, not only 
because it is fundamental to a living church, but be- 
cause some givers at home need to be assured that the 
mission boards are not asking them for unnecessary 
money, and because other givers frequently injure the 
work by well-meant but unwise designation of special 
objects which the boards do not approve. 

Attendant Dangers. The obstacles on the field are 
formidable. Even in America multitudes will gladly 
accept whatever is given them. Every charitable, edu- 
cational, and missionary agency is compelled to exer- 
cise care lest its aid shall diminish the self-reliance of 
the aided and thus increase the dependence that it de- 
sires to diminish. This difficulty is greatly intensified 
in foreign missionary work. The missionary represents 
a more expensive type of civilization than that in a 

127 



128 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

non-Christian land. His scale of living, while mod- 
erate from our view-point, appears large to Asiatics 
and Africans. Centuries of abject poverty and despotic 
government have predisposed most Orientals to accept 
with eagerness whatever is given them. Accustomed 
to living, or rather half-starving, on an income of from 
ten to a hundred dollars a year, the native regards the 
missionary who has a, salary of .$1,200, and the control 
of thousands more for schools, hospitals, and other 
forms of work, as a very wealthy man. He is there- 
fore tempted to go to him for the "loaves and fishes." 
This temptation is strengthened if he gets the impres- 
sion that the missionary may employ him, or that some 
"rich" man or woman in America may support him; 
for he imagines that all white people have money in 
abundance. Even when the native minister or teacher is 
a highly trained man, it is neither practicable nor wise 
to pay him the salary that is paid to a missionary. The 
American or European, who is the product of western 
civilization, who requires many things that the native 
has not learned to require, who is a foreigner on* the 
mission field, and who cannot live upon the food or 
wear the clothing or occupy the house of an Asiatic or 
African, must be supported on a different financial 
scale from that of a native of the country. But the 
reasons for this distinction, so evident to us, are sel- 
dom evident to the native minister. 

The missionary, in turn, is tempted to use money 
freely because of the wretchedness of the people and 
because of the prospect of the visible results which may 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 129 

be secured by a liberal financial policy. Would-be con- 
verts flock to him in such circumstances. Many helpers 
can be hired to apparent advantage, and buildings can 
be cheaply rented and furnished. But experience has 
shown that a church that is wholly supported by foreign 
money is built on quicksand. Its members have a de- 
pendent spirit, resent pressure toward self-support as 
an infringement upon their rights, and fail to realize 
their obligation to live the Christian life without 
being paid for it by the foreigner. In some fields, 
like Japan, the independent spirit of the people has 
obviated this danger; and in others, like Uganda 
and the Kameruns, the policy of self-support has been 
so persistently pressed from the beginning that the 
Christians have never had an opportunity to form the 
habit of financial dependence. But as a rule the danger 
is a real one. 

A Missionary Objective. Missionaries, as a rule, 
are increasingly firm on this subject. Our duty is 
to start Christianity in Asia, not to maintain it indef- 
initely ; to teach the gospel, to found its institutions, to 
aid them so far as necessary to their infancy, but to 
insist that as soon as practicable the churches shall stand 
upon their own foundations. We must be patient and 
reasonable, for now, as of old, it is the common people 
who hear Christ gladly, and in the mission field the 
common people are pitifully poor. But the spirit of 
self-help is as vital to character abroad as it is at home, 
and we must not pauperize the Christians of Asia by 
an indiscriminate and unnecessary charity. They paid 



130 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

heavily for the support of their old religions, and there 
is no reason why they should not in time support their 
new faith. 

Undoubtedly some native workers should be em- 
ployed by the missions, especially for evangelistic work 
in communities where there are no Christians to sup- 
port them and for educational work in schools where 
salaries must be paid to teachers. An infant church 
must be helped. But the number of natives salaried by 
foreign money should be limited to real needs, and the 
salary should be only that which will enable them to 
live near the plane of their countrymen, while they 
should be made to understand clearly that this pecuni- 
ary arrangement is temporary. As far as possible na- 
tive workers should be maintained by their fellow 
Christians, or they should do Christian work in con- 
nection with their own occupations, as St. Paul did 
and as thousands of consecrated men and women in 
America are doing. 

It is highly unwise to turn the expectation of native 
Christians toward the churches of Europe and Ameri- 
ca instead of toward themselves. If there are a thou- 
sand Christians and: a million non-Christians in a given 
district, it is easier to appeal to a board in Toronto, 
Boston, or New York for reenforcements and enlarged 
appropriations than it is for the individual believer to 
do as the Christians of the first century did, and as 
socialists and woman suffragists are doing now, that 
is, accept the privilege and responsibility of com- 
municating one's message to others without thought of 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 131 

pay. Why should a follower of Christ, anywhere in 
the world, whether in Chicago or Peking, assume that 
he is under no obligation to witness for Christ unless 
somebody hires him to do so? 

Principle Involved. We must insist, in season and 
out of season, line upon line and precept upon precept, 
and even at the risk of appearing ungenerous, that while 
the missionary, being a foreigner, will be maintained 
by the people of America, the native workers must not 
look to Americans but to their own people for their 
permanent support. It will take a long time to reach 
it, but the ideal should be foreign money for foreign 
missionaries and native money for native workers. The 
Church will not be self-supporting in any proper sense 
if its work must be done by foreign missionaries in- 
stead of by a native ministry supported by the people. 
One vigorous, self-reliant congregation is worth more 
to the cause of Christ than a score that are dependent 
upon foreign money. We like to say that Christianity 
is adapted to every people. Then it ought to be able to 
live among them, particularly in the Orient where it 
started. There must of course be due regard to local 
conditions. But no land will ever be evangelized until 
it has a self-supporting native Church. American 
money, prudently used as the mission boards are care- 
ful to use it, is needed in large amounts. But while it is 
indispensable as a help to self-support, it would be 
ruinous if made a substitute for it. 

Answers Questions. The principle of self-support 
affords an answer to some questions that frequently 



132 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

come before Christians at home. For instance: Shall 
we erect expensive churches in the mission field? 
Plausible appeals are frequent; but it has been found 
that a church built by foreigners is regarded by native 
Christians as the foreigner's church and that they do 
not feel the same interest in it that they feel toward a 
humble structure which they themselves have paid for. 
When a well-meaning but misguided friend in New 
England sent a stove to heat a church in a mission sta- 
tion of the American Board in Asiatic Turkey, the 
native officers of the church sent the missionariesw a bill 
for their time and labor in setting it up. The Presby- 
terian Board once received a request for an appropria- 
tion to pay for shoveling snow from the roof of a 
church in Persia. The board's reply should have been 
warm enough to melt the snow. The trouble was that 
the church was supposed to belong to the missionary 
and not to the people. Why should they work for him 
for nothing? 

Christians of the apostolic age, when driven by per- 
secution from synagogues and the temple, erected the 
humble edifices which were all that their weakness 
and poverty could afford. It does not follow that the 
numerous and wealthy Christians of the twentieth 
century should worship in a shed or under a tree be- 
cause the Christians of the first century did so. Chris- 
tianity to-day requires for effective work many things 
that the primitive church did not have time or re- 
sources to secure. The house of God should not be 
cheaper or plainer than the house in which the indi- 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 133 

vidual Christian lives and the building in which he 
transacts his business. Dignity and taste find proper 
expression in architecture as in dress. 

Qn the other hand, moderation should characterize 
the Christian attitude in the mission field. If the 
church edifice should not be a hovel, neither should it 
be an opera-house. If it should not be beggarly, nei- 
ther should it be so costly as to beggar those who 
attend it. This is particularly important where we are 
trying to establish the Church among people whose 
poverty is so dire as to be almost incredible to one 
accustomed to American standards. Native preachers 
must do the future work, and they must, as in other 
lands, live on salaries which their congregations can 
pay, and preach in churches which their people can 
build. Otherwise we shall not establish a living Chris- 
tianity. Let them build as expensively as they like with 
their own money, and let us encourage them to make 
the house of God a worthy one. But the best missionary 
practise to-day is very conservative in building churches 
on the mission field except where a larger building is 
required for general station work, union meetings, an- 
nual conferences, or bodies of students, than a local 
congregation could be reasonably expected to provide. 
In other places foreign assistance seldom should exceed 
one half or one third of the cost. Places of worship in 
out-stations should be wholly provided by the native 
Christians, save in very exceptional cases. Chapels for 
evangelistic work in communities where there are no 
local Christians must sometimes be provided from 



134 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

foreign funds, and, in the case of street chapels in 
metropolitan cities, these may require considerable 
sums, as a site is expensive in such cities and the 
building may have to be large and equipped with facili- 
ties for institutional work. To guard against unwise 
expenditure, the judgment of the mission board con- 
cerned should be sought and money should be given 
only through it and for an object and to an amount 
that it approves. 

Corrects a Wrong Drift. The principle of self- 
support also bears upon the question of assigning the 
salaries of particular native workers to givers in 
America. This plan has been tried with disastrous 
consequences. Experience has proved that it is ad- 
ministratively impracticable and expensive on account 
of the thousands of special accounts and the greatly 
increased correspondence that it involves. The average 
mission board has several thousands of these workers. 
They are employed by the missionaries on the field for 
varying periods and at various salaries. They are 
frequently changed. The missionary may pay one at 
a given rate for a few months,, and then reduce his 
salary as the native Christians can be induced to in- 
crease their share of his support. If the natives know 
that a definite sum has been sent from America, the 
missionary cannot easily persuade them to assume 
larger financial responsibility, and the native worker 
himself will be apt to resent the missionary's effort, if 
indeed he does not suspect him of keeping the money 
for himself. "It was given for me and I have a right 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 135 

to the whole of it," he reasons. The method is utterly 
impracticable. It undermines the self-reliance of the 
native worker, deprives him of incentive to develop the 
giving of his people, renders him independent of them, 
leads them to regard him as a foreign hireling who is 
financially profiting by a Christian profession, lessens 
their sense of duty to contribute to his support, and 
seriously hampers the efforts of the missionaries to 
promote self-support. The difficulty is intensified when 
a photograph is asked where no photographer is within 
reach and no money to pay him if there is one, and 
when letters are requested from a native who perhaps 
never w T rote a letter in his life, who knows no English, 
and whose laborious efforts to address a distant "great 
man" must be revised and re-revised and then trans- 
lated and mailed by an overworked missionary who 
can hardly find time to write to his own relatives. 
Money for native workers invariably should be given 
through a mission board in such a way that the board 
can send it in a lump sum to a mission, that is, the 
organized body of missionaries in the field concerned, 
and that body should have liberty to use it at discre- 
tion for the best interests of the cause, unembarrassed 
by any designation from America. 

Applied to Students from Mission Lands. Still 
another application of the principle of self-support 
relates to the frequent appeals in behalf of students 
from non-Christian lands who are flocking to America 
in increasing numbers. We do not refer to those who 
have been graduated from the mission or government 



136 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

schools in their native land and who have come here 
on the recommendation of their former teachers to 
take further studies with the expectation of supporting 
themselves afterwards. When young men come in these 
circumstances, with a knowledge of the English lan- 
guage which enables them to pursue their studies to 
advantage, and with some means of their own to help 
pay their way at least for the first year, they should 
be encouraged. But if financial assistance is needed, it 
should be given as tuition or scholarships are given to 
students in our home colleges, and not from mission- 
ary funds ; nor should any one imagine that he is doing 
the missionary cause a service by giving money to aid 
an Oriental to "return and preach the gospel to his 
own people." 

The experience of boards and missionaries is em- 
phatic, that, with rare exceptions, chiefly among Chi- 
nese and Japanese, natives of non-Christian lands who 
have been trained in Europe or America are not so 
useful on the foreign field as many in the home land 
imagine. The difficulties involved are often inde- 
pendent of the question of personal character. Native 
Christians can be most economically and effectively 
trained in their own country, in the educational insti- 
tutions which, in almost every mission field, have been 
founded at considerable expense for this purpose. A 
sojourn in America usually develops tastes which ren- 
der an Asiatic discontented with the financial support 
which the native church or the mission can give him, 
separates him socially from his own people, and some- 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 137 

times makes him so overbearing in manner that he is 
heartily disliked by other native workers. He thus be- 
comes a source of trouble rather than of help. The 
policy of encouraging large numbers of these young 
people to come to America in the earlier stages of their 
course, without a knowledge of English or. any means 
of support, thwarts wise plans for education on the 
mission field, creates irritation among the whole force 
of native workers, stimulates a worldly ambition, cuts 
off patriotism and race sympathy, and really cripples 
the influence which it is supposed to increase. Not in- 
frequently it leads to imposition upon the home 
churches and to diversion of funds to personal uses 
which are supposed to go for missionary objects. 

The Testing Times. The vital importance of self- 
support has been thrown into startling prominence by 
the plight of the Continental missions during the Euro- 
pean war. These missions were no more dependent in 
this respect than American and British missions are. 
But when that war cut off supplies from home, a large 
part of the work stopped. It was an exotic whose roots 
had not yet struck deep enough into the soil to give 
holding power. This fact is not in itself a criticism. 
Christianity was necessarily projected from Europe 
and America. Manifestly it could not be started in a 
non-Christian land in any other way. Our Lord told 
his disciples to go forth. Christianity had to be 
brought to peoples who did not have it. We must 
remember, too, that during the period of founding, 
mission work must be largely sustained by those who 



138 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

found it. Time is required for this, long time perhaps, 
in some fields at least. Now if the foreign planters are 
suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of support before 
they have completed their work, injury necessarily fol- 
lows. A new orchard cannot be expected to with- 
stand a cyclone before the workmen have finished 
shoveling the earth around the roots and tamping it 
down. The demoralization of the Continental mis- 
sions on account of the European war was there- 
fore inevitable and not indicative of defective methods. 

It should serve, however, as an additional warning 
of the imperative necessity of making mission work 
self-supporting at the earliest possible period. Mis- 
sionaries themselves must continue to depend upon 
their home boards. Disaster at home will always cause 
them hardship, for they should not be and cannot be 
locally supported. If their foreign support fails, they 
must be brought home or temporarily helped by relief 
funds, as the Continental missionaries were during 
the European war. The mission work, however — the 
schools and hospitals and native evangelists, the teach- 
ers and nurses who are salaried by the mission, all the 
great institutional work — cannot be built safely on 
a foundation of foreign money which any catastrophe 
might destroy. 

The lesson is clear. We must be careful to get the 
work rooted in native soil as soon as possible so that 
it will be able to stand without foreign props. We 
must insist that the native Christians shall support it 
as far as practicable and as soon as practicable. We 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 139 

must not use our money in such a way as to make mis- 
sion work top-heavy. The wise expenditure of for- 
eign funds among non-Christian peoples is one of the 
most difficult and delicate of administrative tasks, and 
the local church or individual donor in America who 
gives to special objects without consultation with the 
board concerned may not only embarrass the board but 
do harm rather than good. 

Reasonable Assistance. On the other hand, Chris- 
tians at home should remember that the Church in 
non-Christian lands is yet in its infancy, that they 
themselves needed help at the corresponding period 
of their development, and that each of the home 
churches maintains several boards to give aid to the 
home mission churches and institutions of our own 
country. The churches on the foreign field have not 
yet reached the stage of the churches of the West, 
where there are numerous wealthy congregations 
which can aid the small and weak ones and send 
home missionaries to preach to the unevangelized. 
Here and there praiseworthy beginnings of this kind 
have been made; but, speaking broadly, the native 
congregations are made up of very poor people who 
are less able to support their churches than mem- 
bers of home mission churches in the United States. 
It is undoubtedly better to let them struggle and 
sacrifice than to give them help which would foster 
the spirit of dependence; but we should not see the 
leaders, who are most indispensable to the growth of 
the Church, the extension of the gospel, and the main- 



140 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

tenance of our schools and colleges, driven into com- 
mercial life or government employ because their full 
support cannot yet be provided by their poverty- 
stricken fellow Christians. The question which con- 
fronts many a capable Asiatic minister and teacher is 
not so much additional comfort as the bare necessities 
of life for himself and his family. A larger sum for 
this purpose, judiciously used by prudent mission 
boards, will not harm but greatly strengthen the work. 

How It Works. Many mission fields furnish in- 
teresting examples of the policy of self-support. The 
most competent man is selected as local leader, and he 
serves without compensation, like a Sunday-school 
superintendent in America. After a while, when his 
whole time is required, he receives a small salary, but 
the people pay it. When evangelists are employed for 
work in villages where there are no Christians, the older 
congregations are expected to contribute something 
toward their support, the missionaries supplementing 
this fund so far as may be expedient. Ninety- four 
per cent, of the 1,152 salaried evangelists and teachers 
of one mission are supported by the native congrega- 
tions. The missionaries do not go to unreasonable 
extremes in their refusal to employ native Christians ; 
they use them wherever the interests of the work ap- 
pear to them to necessitate help. But the pressure for 
self-support is strong. 

The response of the native Christians often moves 
the visitor deeply. Imagine a call for an offering in 
a congregation whose men's wages are fifteen cents 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 141 

a day and whose women toilers earn five! Consider 
then the significance of the fact that contributions and 
fees of Christians in the foreign field in 1913 for 
all Christian effort, amounted to $7,085,230. One 
board reports an increase in receipts on the mission 
field of 377 per cent, in ten years. During the same 
period, its receipts from Christians in the United 
States increased 130 per cent. It is true that the gifts 
abroad include all objects and that at home the refer- 
ence is only to foreign missions. When we remember 
that ten cents mean as much in Asia as a dollar means 
in America, such gifts bear eloquent witness to the 
genuineness of the faith of the givers. 

When surprise was expressed at the generous con- 
tribution of a small foreign mission church, the native 
elder replied: "Being ignorant people, with no one to 
instruct us, we looked unto the Bible for instruction, 
and we saw that at least a tenth of our income must 
be given to the Lord Jesus." One devout Christian 
explained the fact that his church was self-supporting 
by saying that several years before, the believers had 
learned the secret of giving, which was that giving was 
an offering to the Lord and a part of the worship of 
God. 

Unique Kamerun Offering. Among the churches 
in the Kameruns on the west coast of Africa, a 
convert is not admitted to the sacraments unless he 
gives systematically and proportionately to the Lord's 
work. The believers build their own churches. "I 
never saw the like since I was born," said a Bulu 



142 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

woman as she stood with a basket on her back and 
her eyes scanning the church at Elat. The Rev. 
A. W. Halsey, then visiting the mission, echoed her 
wonder, for he found the church the largest build- 
ing in southern Kamerun, and seating 4,000. The 
center posts, brought in on the shoulders of men, 
reached thirty-six feet above ground. One thousand 
bamboo poles, carried by the people from the swamps 
and entwined by bush rope holding the thatch roof, 
served as rafters. Ten thousand mats, twelve feet 
long, made of bamboo leaves woven by the schoolboys, 
constituted the roof. Four thousand and ten persons 
were present at the dedication in 19 10. To-day 15,000 
persons are on the contributing list in a church of 
2,297 communicant members and 13,000 enrolled can- 
didates for membership. 1 

Self -Propagation 

Inborn Christian Motive. Self -propagation is an- 
other duty which boards and missionaries diligently 
seek to cultivate in the churches in the mission field. 
Converts are taught that the missionary motive should 
become operative within them as soon as they become 
Christians, and that they are under the same obligation 
as Christians in America to give the knowledge of 



x Cf . the following books on self-support : John L. Nevius, 
Planting and Development of Missionary Churches; C. H. Car- 
penter, Self -Support Illustrated in the History of the Bassein 
Karen Mission from 1840 to 1880; J. Campbell Gibson, Mission 
Problems and Mission Methods in South China. 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 143 

Christ to others. Our Lord adopted this method in his 
earthly ministry. While he preached to the multitudes 
who came to him, he taught his disciples to "go out 
into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to 
come in." % He carefully trained a body of men to 
extend the work after his death, and one of his last 
commands to his followers was to "make disciples of 
all the nations." 2 "Come" was Christ's invitation 
to sinners. "Go" and seek them was his direction to 
Christians. Paul also worked in this way. He went 
to a city, proclaimed the gospel, organized believers 
into a church, remained long enough to get them fairly 
started, and then left them to propagate the faith them- 
selves. 

Evangelizing and Christianizing. The modern mis- 
sionary will have to remain longer than Paul did, 
for he does not find such prepared conditions as the 
great apostle found in the Jews of the dispersion. A 
land may be evangelized in a generation; that is, all 
of its inhabitants may be told of Christ ; but Christian- 
izing it, that is, giving them an intelligent idea of what 
Christianity means, inducing them to accept it, and 
to conform their lives to its teaching — this may be the 
toilsome process of centuries. It has not been com- 
pleted yet in Europe and America, although the gospel 
was brought to our ancestors nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago. Moreover, when the object has been at- 
tained in one country, the responsibility of the mis- 
sionary and the home Church will not cease but will be 

*Luke xiv. 23. 2 Matt. xxviii. 19. 



144 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

transferred to other populations. But whether our 
stay in a given field be long or short, we should reso- 
lutely keep in mind the necessity of establishing a self- 
propagating native Church. 

Home Church Limitations. Self -propagation is 
necessary from the view-point of the home Church. 
Europe and America cannot send out enough mission- 
aries to preach the gospel effectively to all the thou- 
sand millions of the non-Christian world. Consider 
how many persons one Christian worker can be reason- 
ably expected to lead to Christ in an average work- 
ing lifetime, and then figure out how many workers 
would be required for a billion people. The mission 
boards ought not to appoint so many missionaries even 
if they could get them. It would be as foolish for 
them to send out a hundred thousand missionaries as 
it would be for a government to f orm an army of gen- 
erals while making no provision for subalterns, non- 
commissioned officers, and privates. The foreign mis- 
sionary is an apostle in the literal sense — one sent, a 
leader, an organizer, a superintendent. He is to bear 
the first message and train those who receive it to bear 
it to others. Christ appointed twelve apostles for that 
generation, not ten thousand. The permanent work in 
each community was done by local Christians. To 
supply non-Christian nations with the proportion of 
ministers that we have in the United States would 
require 1,500,000 ministers; and as only about one 
third of the foreign missionary body is composed of 
ordained men — the others being teachers, physicians, 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 145 

nurses, and lay evangelists — the total number of mis- 
sionaries on this basis would be over four millions. 
Such a host of qualified persons could not be found, 1 
and could not be supported if found, nor should the 
foreign field be flooded with so vast an army of aliens 
even if they could be found and supported. 

Native Workers Indispensable. The native worker 
must be the main dependence for spreading Christian- 
ity in a non-Christian land. He can live in his own 
country on much less than a foreigner, and he has 
a knowledge of native idioms, ways of thinking, and 
manners and customs that few foreigners can ever 
obtain. There is no racial gulf between him and the 
people to whom he preaches. There is much about the 
Asiatic and African that will ever remain inscrutable 
to the American and European. The former, in par- 
ticular, is apt to be secretive and to make his face and 
manner a mask to conceal his real thoughts. The 
native evangelist is able to get behind this mask, and 
just because he is a native, and probably one of superior 
force of character, the people are more influenced by 
him than by a foreigner. Most converts are now made 
by native workers. An experienced missionary in 
Manchuria, in reporting 1,200 conversions, said that 
the first principles of Christian instruction were im- 
planted almost invariably by the natives, and that he 
could not trace more than four and twenty who were 
directly the converts of the foreign missionary. Other 

*See author's book on The Why and How of Foreign Missions, 
ch. Ill, "Qualifications and Appointment." 



146 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

missionaries declare that five hundred native evangel- 
ists would be a far greater power for Christ in a mis- 
sion field than five thousand foreigners. 

Place Still for Foreign Workers. We do not mean 
to minimize the need for new missionaries. The pres- 
ent force is far too small for effective superintendence. 
The home Church should not relax its efforts to pro- 
vide a more adequate supply of foreign workers ; but, 
while we continue this effort, we must try to develop 
in every possible way the spirit of self-propagation 
in the native Church. Many difficulties beset this 
problem. Hundreds of native Christians may ask 
employment as evangelists who are quite unfit for it; 
nor is every one who is willing to work without pay 
qualified for efficient service. But these and other 
difficulties can and should be overcome. The more 
successful the work of the foreign missionary, the 
more vital it is to develop in the Church a zeal to main- 
tain and extend it. 

Test of Vitality. Self -propagation is indispensable 
from the view-point of the Church itself, quite apart 
from any foreign assistance that may be available. A 
Church, like a family or nation, that does not grow 
from within will die, for its members will have no suc- 
cessors. Real growth cannot be stuck on from the 
outside. One cannot make a fruitful tree by nailing 
on branches and tying on apples. The principle of 
growth must be in the tree. Real love for Christ will 
find expression in desire to lead others to him. Self- 
propagation is therefore an evidence of vitality and 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 147 

energy, and in developing it the missionary is develop- 
ing the very life itself. 

Does this statement awaken uncomfortable reflec- 
tions in the minds of the readers of these pages? How- 
many members of a typical church in Europe and 
America ever think of speaking even to their acquaint- 
ances, to say nothing of strangers, about the Christian 
life? How many assume that their minister is paid 
to do that for them? Why should not a Christian 
speak naturally and easily about a subject that ought 
to be uppermost in his mind? 

Personal work among the unconverted is far more 
common among Christians in the mission field than in 
America. It is true that not all professed followers of 
Christ on the foreign field are characterized by this 
zeal. Some missionaries, like nearly all ministers at 
home, are depressed by the disposition of church-mem- 
bers to leave such work to the men who receive a 
salary for doing it. But in many places the impulse 
to tell others the good news is strong. In thousands 
of villages in the non-Christian world, not a day passes 
that devoted believers do not open the Word of God 
and tell the story of Christ to their listening country- 
men. 

Pledging Service. During a Bible training class 
in one city, the men were invited to pledge definite time 
for house-to-house work for Christ. Enough days of 
preaching were pledged to equal the work of one man 
for nine years, and a large additional number of men 
pledged themselves to begin each day with the petition : 



148 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

"Lord, what wilt thou have me do to-day?" In an- 
other letter we read : "The Church is waking up to a 
strenuous effort to take the gospel to every house this 
year. At a circuit class 250 were present. One eve- 
ning was given to the subject of personal work, and an 
opportunity for pledging a number of days' work dur- 
ing the year resulted in an aggregate of 2,700 days of 
preaching promised. Some Christians who could not 
control their time have subscribed each a half month's 
salary. An ox-load of 4,000 copies of Mark's Gospel 
was sent to me during the class, and in less than half 
an hour all were purchased by the Christians to give 
to such as promised to read it. The Gospel is going 
to reach every family in my territory this year." 

Model Village. The reputation of Sorai, Korea, 
ought to be as wide as Christendom. Think of a vil- 
lage of fifty-eight houses, in fifty of which all persons 
over fifteen years of age are Christians; a community 
in which there is no liquor, no vice of any kind, where 
the Sabbath is scrupulously kept, and the entire popula- 
tion attends church, Sunday-school, and prayer-meet- 
ing ! Two brothers were God's instruments in creating 
this model Christian village. The elder was converted 
through the Rev . John Ross, during a visit in 
Manchuria. Like Andrew of old, "he findeth first his 
own brother, . . . and saith unto him : We have found 
the Messiah, . . . He brought him unto Jesus." Re- 
moving to Sorai, these brothers preached the gospel 
with such power and exemplified it with such beauty 
of character that the whole village was transformed. 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 149 

No missionary resides in Sorai and none is needed, for 
Sau Kyung-jo wisely shepherds the flock. 

Eminent Witnesses in Japan. An explosion oc- 
curred on a Japanese battleship. The son of the Vice- 
Admiral was involved in the wreckage. While search 
was being made for the bodies, many prominent Jap- 
anese called upon the mother to offer condolences. She 
told them that she felt the need of the consolations 
of the Christian religion in that time of anxiety, and 
she called upon her Japanese pastor to read the Word 
of God and to offer prayer. He was a young man who 
had been recently graduated from the theological 
seminary. It was a difficult position for him ; but with 
tact and fidelity he opened the New Testament and 
directed the hearts of all to the throne of God, while 
Japanese in high official position, some of whom had 
never heard such words before, bowed with the 
anxious mother. Later, the body of the son was found. 
The stricken parents announced that the public fu- 
neral would be followed by a Christian service, and that 
any of their friends who wished to come would be wel- 
come. A distinguished company assembled. The 
young Japanese again spoke, impressively dwelling 
upon the Christian meaning of death and the comfort 
which God gives to his children in the time of need. 

Mr. Morimura Ichizaimon, a wealthy merchant of 
Tokyo, became a Christian late in life and immediately 
dedicated himself to witnessing for Christ. In his 
addresses he tells his personal history. The Rev. J. B. 
Hail, who heard him speak in a series of crowded 



150 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

meetings, writes that he said of himself : "I began my 
mercantile career with just ten tempos (eight cents). 
I was not acquainted with either Buddhism or Shin- 
toism. But I thought there must be One somewhere 
in the heavens who cared for men, and I prayed to that 
One whom I did not know, and I am sure that he has 
helped me although I did not know him. When I had 
time afterwards, I studied Buddhism, Confucianism, 
and Shintoism; but they gave me no satisfaction. 
After seventy years spent in getting money, I found 
that money could not satisfy me. But at last I found 
what I need in the Bible. In it I found Christ and in 
Christ I found God, and now T I have given myself with 
all that I have to God, and am as peaceful in mind and 
heart as an infant in its mother's arms. Since I have 
given myself with all I have to Christ, I have had the 
only true joy that I have ever known. The knowledge 
of Christ is better than all the wealth of the world. I 
am now eighty-four years old. My sons and family, 
when I told them that I was going to witness for Christ, 
tried to dissuade me. They said : 'There are plenty of 
young men to do that; you are old and should take 
things easy. You do not need to do this.' But I said : 
'It may be that as I am an old man I will die on the 
road, or I may fall dead in the pulpit. Well, let it 
be so, I am going to spend the remainder of my days 
in testifying for my Lord.' When they saw that they 
could not dissuade me, they reluctantly agreed to my 
starting out. I have renewed my youth and am as 
well as I ever was in my life." The reputation of this 




UN HO, THE BLIND LEPER GIRL 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 151 

man brings out large audiences of the merchant class, 
and his simple story makes a profound impression. 

Fruitful Chinese Lives. That man of God, Ding 
Li Mei, of China, is one of the great evangelists of the 
century. Missionary letters have teemed for years 
with accounts of his services. He sways multitudes, 
and without finding it necessary to be coarse or sen- 
sational. His language and manner are those of a cul- 
tivated Christian gentleman and men take knowledge 
of him that he has been with Jesus. 

Who could have a more limited opportunity for 
personal Christian work than a leper girl ? Born blind, 
sold by her callous parents into slavery, Un Ho was 
led by her owner through the streets of Canton to sing 
for copper coins. Her foot becoming sore, she was 
taken to a mission hospital, where her foot had to be 
amputated. The woman who owned her then cast 
her off as useless. But in the hospital, Un Ho listened 
to the reading of the New Testament, learned to re- 
peat the whole of it except a few chapters from the 
Book of Revelation, and joyfully gave her heart to 
Christ. She was then discovered to be a leper and 
was sent to the leper settlement outside of the east 
gate. There was no other Christian there, and so day 
by day Un Ho repeated the chapters from the Bible, 
and in three months brought thirty people to the mis- 
sionaries to be baptized. During her illness she led 
190 other lepers to Christ. A blind, slave, sick, 
crippled, leper, peasant, Chinese girl leading 220 hope- 
lessly diseased men and women to him who, when on 



152 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

earth, laid his hands on a leper and tenderly said : "Be 
thou clean !" 

Missionary Impulse. Several of the churches in 
Asia and Africa have undertaken home mission 
work in a systematic way and some of them have 
started work in other lands. The Japanese churches 
have well-organized boards of home missions and they 
are extending their work to Korea. In the latter 
country, the native churches sent one of their first or- 
dained clergymen as a missionary to the island of Quel- 
part in 1907. It is interesting to note that he was a 
man who had stoned Dr. Samuel Moffett on the streets 
of Pingyang nineteen years before. Korean Chris- 
tians have now undertaken regular missionary work 
among Korean emigrants to Manchuria and the un- 
evangelized Chinese in the Province of Shantung. A 
missionary reports that a city church in his station is 
carrying on home mission work in over 140 villages in 
the adjacent region, that every Sunday the members 
go out for regular preaching, and that other churches 
are no whit behind in bringing in new believers. A 
man was overheard praying in Chung-ju: "O Lord, 
we are a despised people, the weakest nation on the 
earth. But thou art a God who choosest the despised 
things. Wilt thou use this nation to show forth thy 
glory in Asia !" 

Such facts as these encourage us to apply to the 
churches in several non-Christian lands what the Rev. 
Daniel Crosby Greene said of Japan: "It is a matter 
for great rejoicing that with the growth in numbers 



SELF-SUPPORT AND SELF-PROPAGATION 153 

there is an increasing sense of responsibility for the 
evangelization of their own country. There has al- 
ready grown up a large body of self-supporting 
churches which are deeply imbued with the belief that 
it is their duty to prove to the world that Christianity 
is no longer an exotic, but has planted its roots firmly 
in the soil of their native land." 



VII 
SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 

Social Service 

Change of Emphasis. A few years ago, most writers 
on the essential duties to which a church should 
be trained would not have included social service. The 
social responsibilities of Christians were recognized 
in a general way, but they were regarded as incidental. 
The followers of Christ are now realizing that these 
responsibilities demand larger attention as one of the 
primary obligations of a true church of God. The 
necessity for this is particularly urgent on the foreign 
field where social conditions are most radically and 
lamentably wrong. The evils are so great and the 
neglect of the defective classes is so heartless that mis- 
sionaries cannot ignore them. 

Until comparatively recent years medical missions 
represented the only systematic effort to meet these 
evils by direct methods. The gospel wrought many 
social changes in other directions ; but, while they were 
considered of primary importance by government offi- 
cials and others who are not particularly interested in 
the spiritual phases of missionary work, they were 
regarded as more or less incidental by many supporters 
of missions and by some missionaries. Their inter- 
pretation of the aim of the missionary enterprise — 
to preach the gospel and to plant the Church — did not 

i55 



156 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

include any more changes in this world than were be- 
lieved to be necessary to fit man for the world to come. 
Even medical missions were encouraged chiefly as a 
means of opening doors of opportunity for preaching, 
and not because hospitals were recognized as an essen- 
tial part of missionary work. I have heard arguments 
to the effect that hospitals are no longer needed in 
Korea, as the opportunities for evangelistic work are 
now sufficiently great without them. Industrial schools 
were sharply denounced. Robert Needham Cust, an 
acknowledged English authority of the last generation, 
wrote: "No one can doubt the benevolence of those 
who undertake such enterprises ; but I think most prob- 
ably the spirituality of the manager must be driven 
out of him. . . . The whole thing is so thoroughly 
contrary to apostolic practise and post-apostolic expe- 
rience. The duty of the missionary is to preach the 
gospel, and nothing else, except what helps preaching 
the gospel. His converts and his church may be poor 
and uncivilized; that is not his affair; the poor have 
the gospel preached to them; that is his sole duty." l 
Initial Social Efforts. Many missionaries concerned 
themselves with the pitiful condition of famine suffer- 
ers, fallen women, the blind, the insane, the orphaned, 
and the deaf and dumb ; but at first they usually acted 
on their own initiative. In some instances their efforts 
were disapproved by their associates and by their 
boards. Dr. and Mrs. John G. Kerr, of Canton, China, 

1 Essay on Prevailing Methods of the Evangelization of the 
Non-Christian World, 16. 




jKijy ?! \iMT2 










DR. KERR'S HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE 
DR. NILES' SCHOOL FOR BLIND GIRLS 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 157 

built their hospital for the insane, Dr. Mary Niles, 
also of Canton, her school for the blind, Mrs. Annetta 
T. Mills her school for the deaf and dumb at Chefoo, 
without official assistance beyond the payment of their 
salaries, and were left for many years to carry per- 
sonally the burden of superintending their respective 
institutions and of obtaining financial support for 
them. Fortunately, these missionaries had large self- 
reliance and force of character, and by indefatigable 
labors, which sometimes involved great anxieties, they 
managed to develop and sustain their enterprises. The 
rescue work for Chinese prostitutes in Shanghai was 
conceived in the same way, not as the result of any 
recognized policy, but as the effort of a group of mis- 
sionaries acting outside of their specified duties. The 
splendid effort that has been made in behalf of the 
prostitutes in Japan was inaugurated by an individual 
missionary, and the only agency which has officially 
taken up this work as an integral part of its regular 
operations is the Salvation Army. Dr. James W. Mc- 
Kean, of northern Siam, bore a heavy load of care in 
developing a beneficent work for lepers near Chieng- 
mai. Other instances might be cited in various lands. 
These are, of course, general statements. It would 
be easy to cite exceptions; but the main fact remains 
that, as a rule, the application of the gospel to social 
conditions was not regarded until recently as an essen- 
tial part of the missionary enterprise but was largely 
left to individuals. The common idea was either that 
this world was so doomed anyway that the only thing 



158 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

to be done was to pluck as many brands as possible 
from the burning before it was too late to do so, or 
that the gospel could be left to work out its own re- 
formatory effects in society. It was recognized that 
social conditions needed to be changed; but it was 
believed that the native Churches would attend to them 
in due time. When a certain missionary on furlough 
was asked, in a conference with students, what his 
mission was doing in the way of social service, he 
replied: "Nothing; we are too busy preaching the 
gospel. ,, It would be easy to show that this answer 
was not a fair characterization of the work of his 
mission; but it illustrates the attitude of mind which 
long prevailed. 

Former Attitude of Home Churches. The mission- 
aries who held this view merely reflected the attitude 
of their home churches. Christians have founded and 
are supporting nine tenths of the charitable work of 
our American communities and have been the chief 
factors in promoting legislation for municipal, county, 
and state institutions for the sick, the poor, and the 
defective. But efforts of this kind were not consid- 
ered the duty of the churches themselves, and when 
time and money were thus "diverted" from church 
"work," the action was sometimes resented. The com- 
mon idea was expressed in the hymn which congrega- 
tions used to sing with self-satisfied fervor: 

"Pull for the shore, sailor; 

Pull for the shore. 
Leave the poor old stranded wreck, 
And pull for the shore." 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 159 

Ministers were supposed to devote themselves exclu- 
sively to sermons, prayer-meetings, and pastoral work, 
and their themes were to be "the gospel" only, in alleged 
imitation of St. Paul who was determined not to 
"know anything, . . . save Jesus Christ and him cruci- 
fied." * It did not occur to them that St. Paul's 
Epistles afford abundant evidence that he interpreted 
Jesus Christ in terms of the whole duty and relation- 
ship of man, making him the regulative principle of 
all human life. Indeed, a veteran clergyman, after 
hearing that I had preached a sermon on the pitiable 
lot of women and children in sweat-shops, piously said 
that he thanked God that in a ministry of fifty years 
he had never preached on such a subject but that he 
had confined himself to the gospel! 

Similar convictions built up churches which had 
eloquent preaching and inspiring music, paid for by 
pewholders some of whom, as recent events have 
shown, spent their week-days as insurance grafters, 
political corruptionists, betrayers of trust funds, and 
child-labor employers. When an indignant public 
sentiment began to castigate them, they lifted their 
hands in innocent surprise that any one should imagine 
that they had been doing wrong. Religion was con- 
ceived as a man's private affair and as having no 
necessary relation to business or politics. The Euro- 
pean war has given frightful illustration of the inade- 
quacy of that interpretation of Christianity. 

Example of Christ and the Apostles. We should not, 

h Cor. ii. 2. 



160 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

however, go to the other extreme by insisting that the 
preeminent duty of the Church is not to preach the 
gospel but to effect social reforms. This would be a 
false alternative. No such distinction is permissible be- 
tween the gospel and social service rightly understood. 
Christ and his apostles made the preaching of the 
gospel the first thing, and they did not organize soci- 
eties for the prevention of crime or found orphanages 
and insane asylums. On the other hand, the age in 
which Christ lived and the time and circumstances of 
his brief ministry did not make it practicable for him 
to do many things which he might have done in other 
circumstances and which he expects his followers to 
do. If he and his apostles did not undertake special 
lines of social service, neither did they organize Sun- 
day-schools, women's societies, young people's soci- 
eties, mission bands, Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions, and other agencies which are now deemed indis- 
pensable parts of Christian activity. But Christ did 
heal the sick on a large scale. He opened the eyes of 
the blind, he made the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, 
and the lame to walk, he restored reason to the insane, 
and he encouraged special ministries to the poor. The 
apostles organized a board of deacons to relieve desti- 
tute widows. 1 In doing these things to-day, we are 
but following his example. 

The spirit of Christ calls us to do something more 
in the direction of social service than the Church has 
yet done either at home or abroad. No such highly 

*Acts vi. i-6. 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 161 

developed creeds and church organizations as we have 
to-day were formulated by our Lord or by St. Paul; 
but we are not going to disband our churches or burn 
our creeds on that account. I believe, with all my 
heart, that the supreme duty of the missionary enter- 
prise is to make Jesus Christ intelligently known as 
a personal Savior, to induce men to accept him as 
such, and to aid them in establishing a self -propa- 
gating, self-supporting, and self-governing Church. 
Evangelistic work, therefore, should be first in impor- 
tance always and everywhere. 

But when the gospel is introduced among a non- 
Christian people, we should not leave converts to ascer- 
tain and work out unaided the meaning of that gospel 
in human society. It has taken western Christians 
many centuries to learn this lesson. Why should we 
leave Asiatics and Africans to stumble along for the 
same number of centuries? It is a reproach to the 
Churches of America and Europe that they have so 
largely left the outworking of the gospel in society 
to independent and voluntary organizations. 

Social Vision Needed. Of what avail to tell a young 
Christian that he should abstain from liquor, when 
saloons on every corner incite him to drink ; to teach 
a girl that she should be pure in a land whose social 
customs openly recognize impurity ; to insist that a boy 
shall be honest when dishonesty is woven into the very 
warp and woof of the family and commercial life of 
which he is a part ? The Rev. John E. Clough, mission- 
ary to the Telugus, found that he could make no head- 



162 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

way among the filthy carrion-eating Pariahs of his 
district unless he changed the whole structure of their 
village life. Principal A. G. Fraser of Kandy, Ceylon, 
and Mr. Sam Higginbottom of Allahabad soon came to 
the conclusion that to educate village boys in arithmetic, 
geography, and Bible history, and to send them out 
with no training that would enable them to earn a 
decent living, was to pour water through a sieve. We 
are working at tremendous disadvantage in trying to 
save individuals if we ignore the social conditions 
which influence them. It is important to pull men out 
of the mire; but the proportion of rescued men will be 
small if we do not lessen the mire into which others 
are constantly falling. Much Christian work in the 
past has been done on the principle of the Chinese cart. 
There are no roads in China, except ancient ruts that 
are filled with dust in the dry season and with mud 
and water in the wet season. Instead of improving 
the roads, the Chinese tried to make an indestructible 
springless cart. They succeeded in making one that 
no traveler can use without agony and temptation to 
strong language as it jumps and jolts along; but 
modern China is awakening to the fact that it is worth 
while to spend money on roads as well as carts. 

True Reforms Are Evangelistic. The gospel of 
Christ is as truly presented in the schools for the blind 
and for the deaf and dumb, the asylums and orphan- 
ages and homes for child widows, as it is in what we 
call evangelistic work. Are they not evangelistic too? 
Did not Livingstone preach an essential part of the 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 163 

gospel when he proclaimed to western nations the 
horrors of African slavery as the open sore of the 
world? Did not missionaries in India serve the cause 
of Christ when they protested against the immolation 
of wives on the death of their husbands, the mission- 
aries in Siam when they persuaded the king to issue 
a decree against the national vice of gambling, and the 
missionaries in China when they inaugurated the re- 
cent crusade against opium? I dissent from those 
who feel that we should leave such work to outside 
agencies and who begrudge every dollar that the boards 
spend upon it lest it be taken away from "direct Chris- 
tian work." If I may adapt a sentence which Glad- 
stone was wont to use in contradicting a statement in 
the House of Commons, "I wish to be understood as 
making my dissent as emphatic as the rules of the 
House will permit/' 

Value of Mission Philanthropies. I am not urging 
anything that is new to the mission boards, for nearly 
all of them to-day are conducting social work of this 
kind on a large scale and regard it as an integral sec- 
tion of their work. Indeed a considerable part of the 
modern missionary enterprise might be called Chris- 
tian social settlement work on a large scale. It is one 
of the glories of the foreign missionary enterprise that, 
along with its numerous churches and its expanding 
evangelistic work and as an essential part of its inter- 
pretation of Christ to the non-Christian world, it in- 
cludes 1,6 1 6 hospitals and dispensaries which are treat- 
ing five million patients a year, 25 institutions for the 



164 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

blind and for deaf-mutes, 88 leper hospitals and 
asylums, 21 rescue homes for fallen women, and 21 
homes for untainted children of lepers. These insti- 
tutions, in spite of the fact that the mission boards 
have been able to give them only meager equipment, 
are conducted by carefully selected missionaries who 
have received the best modern training for their spe- 
cial lines of work. I discuss the question here, partly 
because their course in this matter is not unanimously 
approved, and partly because the whole subject of the 
relationship of the Church to such work needs to be 
more systematically studied. The fact that modern 
missions are exerting such an enormous social influence 
is a strong testimony to the normal outworking of the 
gospel in this direction. But the situation should be 
more adequately faced, and we should not be afraid to 
follow our Christian impulses to aid the afflicted and 
dependent in the name and spirit of our Lord for fear 
that we may do something outside of our missionary 
responsibilities. 

Missionaries, therefore, try to impress the native 
churches with their duty toward the social evils of 
their respective countries. These churches are not 
yet financially able to carry this burden unaided; nor 
do they yet know how such work ought to be done, 
even if they were financially able to do it. It would 
not be practicable for mission boards to establish the 
necessary institutions all over the non-Christian world, 
or even those that are needed in any particular country. 
But we should equip and support a limited number so 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 165 

that they will be representative ones which will serve 
as object-lessons to show what the Christ spirit in- 
volves. Mrs. Annetta T. Mills, superintendent of the 
mission school for deaf mutes at Chefoo, China, has 
visited many of the leading cities of that country, tak- 
ing with her several pupils and explaining to officials 
and other influential Chinese what can be done for that 
hitherto helpless and neglected part of the teeming 
population of China. The John G. Kerr Hospital for 
the insane in Canton has demonstrated to the Chinese 
that insane persons should not be driven out as pos- 
sessed of the devil. It would be lamentable if the 
Church were to leave many of the Master's helpless 
ones to be neglected or to be cared for by secular and 
perhaps antichristian agencies. 

Power to Open Doors. As for removing preju- 
dices, winning good-will, and creating opportunities 
for making Christ known in places which are ordi- 
narily difficult of access, what could be more effective 
than loving ministries to the suffering? A native of 
Yamada lost both legs in the war with Russia. The 
Rev. and Mrs. W. F. Hereford thought that the poor, 
helpless cripple would have a better chance to earn 
a living if he had an invalid's rolling chair. Mrs. 
Hereford raised some money by selling curios and 
embroideries, and a stereopticon lecture by Mr. Here- 
ford and a few small local gifts made up the sum 
required to buy the chair in America and to pay the 
freight. Nothing was left but the duty of 30 yen 
($15). Mr. Hereford suggested to a Japanese offi- 



166 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

cial that, as the man had given his legs for his country, 
the country ought to give the duty on the chair. The 
official laughed at him and said that no one but a for- 
eigner would ever think of such a thing. The mis- 
sionary argued the question with him, and the official 
finally gave his consent and the mayor and the governor 
signed the request. The chair was delivered to the city 
office. The Japanese pastor carried the man there on 
his back, and the cripple had his first ride in the munic- 
ipal building in the presence of all the officials. "We 
were glad," said the missionary, "to be able to do this 
work for a man who was not a Christian." All this took 
time and trouble, but both w 7 ere unselfishly given to 
help an afflicted man who had never been inside of a 
Christian church. The result was a profound impres- 
sion upon the whole city, which recognized the spirit 
which animates the followers of Christ. 

An All-Round Gospel. The gospel means some- 
thing more than physical aid for the afflicted, some- 
thing more than hospitals, asylums, and orphanages. 
It is not our main object to clean up houses and cities, 
lessen poverty, and change man's external conditions 
so that he will be a more decent and attractive animal. 
But it is also true that the Christian life means some- 
thing more than preaching and praying. The Epistle 
of James has some caustic words on this subject. We 
must enunciate and explain the teachings of Christ; 
but we must do more — we must show an ignorant 
people what these teachings mean in daily life. The 
Old Testament prophets and the New Testament 




TILE FACTORY, MALABAR COAST 
EMBROIDERY WORKS, CALCUTTA 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 167 

apostles dealt not only with doctrines but with the ills 
and weaknesses and wrongs of human society — the 
sick, the blind, the lame, the deaf, the demoniac, im- 
purity, intemperance, shiftlessness, poverty, crime, op- 
pressions by the rich and powerful and the wrongs 
and sufferings of the poor. When Christ preached in 
Nazareth, he "found the place where it was written, 
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed 
me to preach good tidings to the poor : he hath sent me 
to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 1 
He held up the Good Samaritan as a worthy example, 
and he condemned the priest and the Levite who passed 
by on the other side of a suffering man. 2 In the par- 
able of the great supper, he represented "the master of 
the house" as saying to his servant: "Go out quickly 
into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither 
the poor and maimed and blind and lame." 3 He made 
the spirit of helpfulness for human need one of the 
proofs of his Messiahship, for when the discouraged 
John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask: "Art thou 
he that cometh, or look we for another? . . . He an- 
swered and said unto them: Go your way and tell 
John what things ye have seen and heard ; the blind 
receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are 
cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, 
the poor have good tidings preached to them." 4 And 

J Luke iv. 17-19. 2 Luke x. 30-37. *Luke xiv. 21. 

4 Luke vii. 20-22. 



168 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

in his solemn description of the rewards and punish- 
ments to be announced when he "shall come in his 
glory," he declared that the inheritance should be given 
to those who had ministered to their hungry, thirsty, 
lonely, sick, and imprisoned fellow men, and that those 
who had failed to do this should be banished from 
his presence forever. 1 

Let us declare and exemplify the whole gospel as 
Jesus did. "A Christianity which does not go about 
'doing good' is not the Christianity of Christ. A re- 
ligion which ignores the healing of the body is not the 
religion of him who 'took our infirmities, and bare our 
diseases.' A religion which ignores child labor and 
child mortality is not the religion of him who took the 
children in his arms. A religion which has nothing to 
say about vice and crime in the modern city cannot 
claim kinship with the power that speaks out in the 
great apostolic letters to Corinth and Rome and 
Ephesus. A faith that merely hopes the will of God 
will be done in heaven as it is not on earth is not the 
faith of the Lord's Prayer." 2 

Self -Government 
Self-government is a right as well as a duty and 



2 Matt. xxv. 34-46. 

2 W. H. P. Faunce, The Social Aspects of Foreign Missions, 
22, 23. Compare also James S. Dennis, Christian Missions and 
Social Progress; Edward C. Capen, Sociological Progress in 
Mission Lands; and John E. Clough, Social Christianity in the 
Orient. 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 169 

therefore one for which the rising churches in non- 
Christian lands must be carefully fitted. How can 
churches reasonably be expected to assume the obliga- 
tions of self-support, self -propagation, and social serv- 
ice if they are denied their freedom as autonomous 
bodies ? But the question bristles with perplexities. 

The Mission Side. Boards and missions have hither- 
to controlled Christian w T ork in non-Christian lands. 
This was inevitable during the early stages of the en- 
terprise when converts were few, ignorant, without 
experience or consciousness of power, and almost 
wholly dependent upon the boards and the missions; 
looking to them for the supervision of their churches, 
the support of the schools which educated their chil- 
dren, and the hospitals which cared for theif sick, and 
even the salaries of their preachers and teachers. It 
was natural in such circumstances that white men, un- 
consciously perhaps, should come to regard themselves 
as sole arbiters of the work. Indeed, many of the first 
churches were largely composed of missionaries and 
their families who naturally exercised a supremacy that 
was as inevitable as it was often unconscious. Native 
converts, as they came in one by one, found themselves 
in a church that was essentially foreign in its leader- 
ship. The missionaries— remote from their own 
country, living among people of different races, lan- 
guages, and social customs, and charged with heavy 
responsibilities — of course organized themselves into 
missions both for fellowship and for the more effec- 
tive conduct of their common work through concerted' 



170 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

counsel and action. These missions quickly acquired 
solidarity and influence, partly because they were com- 
posed of highly trained men and women who had been 
selected by their boards on account of superior edu- 
cation, ability, and devotion, and partly because their 
members were the founders and superintendents of 
the mission work during its earlier stages. Thus they 
became firmly established with all the reins of power 
in their hands. 

The Native Side. As the Church grows in numbers 
and power, it is equally natural that this ascendancy of 
foreigners should be disturbed. A distinguished East 
Indian minister, the Rev. K. C. Chatterjee, voiced this 
feeling when he said : "This system [mission control] 
worked very well as long as the native ministers were 
recruited from the orphanages or from the illiterate 
and half -educated classes of people. They were con- 
tent to be in a subordinate position. Now the state of 
things has become different. The Church has grown in 
knowledge and enlightenment and in western ideas of 
working and governing. There are several graduates 
in the Church of recognized universities. Some of 
these are gifted young men of fine Christian charac- 
ter and anxious to do missionary work. They ought 
not to be put in a subordinate position. As they have 
the same educational qualifications and training as the 
foreign missionaries, they ought to have the same status 
and to be allowed to vote in all mission matters. In 
other words, they ought to be made full members of 
the mission/' 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 171 

Facing the Situation. Missionaries keenly feel this 
difficulty. They unhesitatingly declare that such men 
are their equals in ability and culture, and that they 
have greater influence over their own people than any 
foreigner can possibly have. All must see that since an 
essential element in the aim of the missionary enter- 
prise is the establishment of a self-governing Church, 
alien bodies must transfer control to the Church before 
this aim can be realized. 

Ecclesiastical Connection. How should the 
Churches in the mission field be related to the Churches 
in Europe and America ? Should they be integral parts 
of the European and American denominations whose 
missionaries founded them? Or should they become 
independent as soon as possible? This question has 
been warmly debated in many mission fields and in 
many ecclesiastical assemblages in America. A de- 
nomination in the United States is naturally proud of 
its churches in Asia and Africa; churches that it re- 
gards as the fruit of its gifts and prayers and labors; 
and naturally it wants to keep them. But should the 
churches of India, Persia, and China be appendages of 
a foreign Church ten thousand miles away? 

We may be guided to a right policy here by turning 
the question upon ourselves. The first churches in the 
American colonies were offshoots of British and Con- 
tinental Churches ; but how long were our fathers will- 
ing to have that subordination continued? Did they 
not speedily insist upon their right to religious inde- 
pendence as well as civil independence? To-day, we 



172 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

honor and love our mother Churches in Europe, but 
we would never dream of allowing them to control us. 
It is true that there is no difference of race; but any 
intimation that a difference of this kind should affect 
our present problem is highly offensive to the Chris- 
tians in the mission field, who feel in precisely the same 
way in proportion as they grow in numbers and intel- 
ligence. Japan, Korea, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, 
and several other lands already have independent 
Churches, and the number is increasing. These 
Churches are developing a strong nationalistic feeling, 
a conviction that the people should be independent of 
foreign control in religion as well as in government. 
Present indications point to national Churches, and 
we should be glad that they do. 

Hard Readjustments. A serious obstacle lies in the 
natural disposition of man, from which even grace does 
not emancipate, to hold on to power as long as pos- 
sible. It is notoriously difficult for a parent to realize 
that his son is growing to manhood and is entitled to 
settle some questions for himself. This is even more 
apt to be true of western Christians in dealing with 
Christians of a different race who never will see some 
things as we see them nor be disposed to do some 
things as we have always done them. The white man 
can advocate with unction the duties of self-support, 
self -propagation, and social service, for they seem to 
lighten his load. But it is less easy for him to advo- 
cate self-government, for it calls upon him to surrender 
power which he has been accustomed to exercise and 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 173 

which he is disposed to keep. It is hard in such circum- 
stances to pursue a wise course between the extremes 
of prematurely hastening and unduly retarding the 
independence of the native Church. We must balance 
our own judgment with the judgment of the native 
Christians themselves and with our belief in the com- 
mon guidance of the Spirit of God. 

Liberty Trains for Liberty. The rather extraor- 
dinary objection has been urged that if the native 
Church becomes self-supporting and self-governing, 
the home Church cannot control it. But why should 
the home Church control it ? Because the native breth- 
ren are not fitted for independence? When will they 
be, if they are not given a chance to learn? Shall we 
wait until they equal American churches in stability? 
Will a century of dependence develop those qualities 
which wise self-government requires? Some essen- 
tial qualities of character can be developed only by the 
exercise of autonomy. "It is liberty alone/' said 
Gladstone, "which fits men for liberty." This prop- 
osition has its bounds; but it is far safer than the 
counter doctrine: "Wait till they are fit." The way 
to teach a child to walk alone is not to carry him until 
he becomes a man, but to let him begin to toddle for 
himself when he is still young. He will learn faster 
by practise and tumbles than by lying in his mother's 
arms. Said a west African Christian: "I have not 
seen a babe that has been born about eight or ten 
months let down to walk by himself without the par- 
ent or some one else holding him and teaching him 



174 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

how to walk; but the mistake here is that they hold 
this babe [the churches] till the age of forty years. 
You know well that, when a babe is past three years and 
cannot walk, he is lame." 

Discipline by Natives. Church discipline often 
can be administered more effectively by the officers 
of a local church than by a foreigner. A missionary 
wrote from northern Siam: "Last week there came 
a report that one of our women had been gambling in 
the market. I had already been talking up the matter 
of self-government, and now I said to the Laos elders : 
'You four men take up and settle this case.' Well, 
they took it up, and I was mightily pleased with the 
patience, kindliness, and skill they showed in bringing 
the woman to a full confession and expression of 
sorrow without citing witnesses. Then, without pass- 
ing judgment or making a record, they exhorted her 
to make a public confession and renew her covenant 
before the church and watch herself carefully ever 
afterwards, and assured her of their and the disciples' 
prayers and help. I said to myself : 'These men can do 
this kind of thing better without me and the sooner 
I drop it the better.' " 

The Fit Time. When, however, the theory is agreed 
to, the problem is by no means solved. Of course 
native churches should be self-governing in time; but 
when is that time? There is room for wide difference 
of opinion as to whether a particular church has 
attained that maturity of judgment which qualifies it 
to manage its own affairs. Independence may come 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 175 

before the church is fitted for it. But are we to be the 
final judges of fitness? Protestantism holds that any 
considerable body of believers has the right to decide 
for itself whether or not it should be dependent upon 
others. Shall we deny to the churches of Asia a prin- 
ciple which we cherish as fundamental? We can give 
them the benefit of our experience without keeping 
them perpetually in leading-strings. They need a cer- 
tain amount of restraint and counsel; but these are 
most effective when they are moral rather than author- 
itative. 

The churches in the mission field are disposed to say 
something on this subject themselves. While some 
people are so lacking in independent vigor or are so 
accustomed to be dominated by foreigners that they 
look up to the missionary as a superior being and are 
docile under his leadership, others, notably the Japa- 
nese, Chinese, and East Indians, are of a more virile 
and haughty type. The attitude of a church tow r ard 
the mission is naturally influenced by this racial 
spirit. Its members are still Orientals, and share, to 
some extent at least, the irritation of proud and ancient 
races as they see the white man everywhere striving 
for the ascendancy. 

An eminent Japanese Christian, Mr. Uemura of 
Tokyo, writes: "Apart from Christ and the Spirit, 
Japanese Christianity has no need to rely on any one 
whatever. Sufficient unto itself, resolved to stand 
alone, it must advance along the whole line toward 
the realization of this ideal. ... To depend upon the 



176 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

pockets of foreigners for money to pay the bills- is not 
a situation which ought to satisfy the moral sense of 
Japanese Christians. Likewise in the realm of relig- 
ious thought, is it not shameful to accept opinions 
ready-made, relying on the experience of others in- 
stead of one's own? Those of us who are earnestly 
insisting on the independence of the Church in our 
country are not moved by narrow nationalistic ideas. 
. . . We are moved by the positive power of a great 
ideal. ... Is it not a great duty that we owe to God 
and to mankind to develop the religious talent of our 
people and to contribute our share to the religious ideas 
of the world ?" This is more advanced ground than 
most of the churches in the mission field are ready to 
take under present conditions, but it indicates a goal 
which some of them are boldly seeking. 

A Legitimate Result. The growth of the churches 
in the mission field is the fruition of the toils and pray- 
ers of missionaries and their supporters in the home 
lands. But with the development of these churches 
come new and difficult problems. We should consider 
them, not simply because they are forced upon us, but 
because we frankly recognize their justice. We are 
not dealing with men of our own race, whose customs 
and ways of thinking we understand, but with men of 
different points of view, whose hereditary influences 
are far removed from ours and whose minds we cannot 
easily comprehend. It is inevitable in these circum- 
stances that occasional differences of opinion should 
develop. It is a new experience for the white man, who 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 177 

has been accustomed to feel that he represents superior 
intelligence, to be asked to give precedence to men of a 
race that he was brought up to regard as inferior. A 
teacher knows that his pupils must ultimately supplant 
him, but he is not apt to agree with them as to time 
and circumstance. The missionaries who are gladly 
adapting themselves to the conditions of the new era 
are manifesting true Christian grace. 

The situation that we are facing is a natural outcome 
of those truths which we have long sought to incul- 
cate. We like to say that the knowledge of the gospel 
awakens new life. Why then should we be surprised 
that this knowledge is doing in mission lands w r hat it is 
our boast that it did in Europe and America, and why 
should we be afraid of the spirit which w r e have 
invoked ? It is the people of spirit that are worth the 
most. When our rights appear to be jeopardized, let 
us not harbor a sense of injury or feel that we must 
resent an infringement upon our "prerogatives." It 
would be better to go to the other extreme and say that 
we have no rights in non-Christian lands except the 
right of serving our brethren there. 

If the reader finds the statements in this chapter 
rather hard reading, I can assure him that boards and 
missionaries find them much harder practising. The 
time has come when the home Church as well as the 
missionary body should give more careful study to 
these questions. 

Not "Agents" and "Helpers." Two phrases have 
been current in missionary literature which illustrate 



178 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

the difficulty of the situation. They are "native 
agents" and "native helpers." "Agents and helpers" 
of whom? Foreigners, of course. Precisely; and yet 
these natives belong to proud and sensitive races and 
are not infrequently our equals. We have now come 
to the point where we should abandon this terminology 
and the attitude of mind of which it is the expression. 
Native ministers, evangelists, and teachers are not our 
"agents" or "helpers" but our coworkers and our 
brethren. 

These men stand in a hard place. They do not have 
the moral and financial support which the mission- 
ary receives. No great body in other lands holds up 
their hands. They have, as a rule, only the barest neces- 
sities of physical life and few if any of its comforts. 
They, more than the missionary, bear the brunt of 
opposition from angry priests and officials. Some of 
these men of God have been disowned by their families, 
deprived of their property, scourged, imprisoned, and 
killed. But they have manifested a courage and fidelity 
which should deeply move us. If the story of hundreds 
of them could be written, it would be one of the most 
inspiring records in the development of the Church of 
God. Making all due allowance for those who have 
been actuated by improper motives or who have shown 
themselves incompetent, the fact remains that multi- 
tudes have been loyal, humble, and loving servants of 
God. In my conferences with them in many fields 
they discussed large questions with intelligence, cour- 
tesy, and dignity. Sound opinions were expressed and 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 179 

ably advocated. We shall make no mistake in trust- 
ing and honoring these men. 

Teaching Right Standards. The effort to develop 
these essential characteristics involves several affiliated 
forms of work. We cannot enlarge upon these within 
the limits of this book. We can refer only briefly to 
one of them. How can churches be made self- 
propagating, self-supporting, social-serving and self- 
governing unless their own leaders are imbued with 
these ideals and are fitted to carry them into effect? 
To this end, we must not only preach the whole gospel 
in all its wide-reaching significance and application, 
but we must have educational institutions in which to 
train them. Boys and girls must be given the right 
trend of mind early in their lives. Secular govern- 
ment schools, usually non-Christian and sometimes 
antichristian, will not and cannot produce consecrated 
ministers, evangelists, teachers, physicians, nurses, and 
social workers for the Church. 

Providing the Training Institutions. This leads us 
to the large question of educational missions as one of 
the vital necessities of the missionary enterprise. Mis- 
sion schools serve other important ends, but qualified 
leadership for the church is the chief one. Pioneer 
evangelistic work often can be done by untrained 
Christians, but congregations and schools require edu- 
cated men and women, and we must have colleges to 
develop them. One of the most urgent needs of the 
work to-day therefore is a better equipment of the 



180 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

institutions on which we depend for the training of 
native leaders of all kinds. The Church could not live 
if it did not have institutions of this kind for the train- 
ing of its leaders. Those who undervalue educational 
work in missions fail to realize that the surest way to 
keep a church forever dependent is to fail to provide 
it with competent native leadership. 

This is the work of the home churches through the 
boards. Native churches can and should assume in- 
creasing responsibility for direct evangelization. They 
can and they do support a large majority of the pri- 
mary schools which give elementary education to boys 
and girls. But they cannot for a long time to come 
provide plant, equipment, and support for institutions 
of higher grade, of which there are now on the mission 
field 86 colleges and universities, 1714 boarding and 
high schools, in medical schools and classes, 98 
schools and classes for nurses, and 522 theological and 
normal schools and training classes. These institutions 
represent a splendid and indispensable phase of foreign 
mission work. Very few of them possess adequate 
equipment, and the urgent calls of the mission boards 
in their behalf should meet with generous response. 

Recruiting the Training Force. Equally urgent is 
the need of consecrated leaders from America for the 
faculties. Each institution requires at least one or 
two, and the larger schools and colleges several, for- 
eign teachers in addition to the native staff. Here is 
an opportunity for the finest type of American Chris- 
tian character and culture, for young men and women 



SOCIAL SERVICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT 181 

of high intellectual training, wide outlook, consecrated 
hearts, and resolute faith. To mold the coming 
leaders of the rising churches in non-Christian lands 
is a privilege that an angel might covet. May it not be 
that to some readers of these pages the Holy Ghost is 
saying, as he did to the little church at Antioch: 
"Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where- 
unto I have called them." * 
\Acts xiii. 2. 



VIII 

RELATION TO MISSIONS AND WESTERN 
CHURCHES 

The subject of this chapter opens into wide areas, 
far too wide to be traversed in this book. The region 
is comparatively little known and therefore has not 
received that consideration which its importance de- 
mands. Conditions are now developing which make it 
one of the most urgent questions of mission policies 
and methods. The boards are studying it with a care 
not unmingled with anxiety, and the home churches 
should familiarize themselves at least with its main 
features. The problem of relationship has already be- 
come acute in some lands, and it will sooner or later 
emerge in all, unless our work is to fail. Absence of 
the problem of the Church in the mission field would 
mean absence of the Church, or at least of one that is 
good for anything. The problem grows out of success, 
not out of failure. 

The Situation Surveyed 

We can consider here only a few of the questions 
involved, and these merely in outline. 

Possible Solutions. What shall be the relation of 
foreign missionaries to a self-governing native Church? 
Shall they take native leaders into the foreign mis- 

183 



184 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

sion? Or shall they dissolve their organization and 
enter the native Church? Or shall they continue their 
separate organization, and work independently of the 
Church, although in sympathetic fellowship with it? 
Or. shall they form some cooperative relationship by 
which the two bodies shall maintain their respective 
identities, but work together? 

The first of these alternatives — to bring natives into 
the mission — is clearly impracticable, as it would place 
them still more completely under the control of for- 
eigners, separate them from their own people, exalt and 
perpetuate an organization that ought to be regarded as 
a temporary expedient, and thus jeopardize one of the 
essential elements in the missionary aim, namely, to 
establish a native Church that shall have ultimate 
supremacy. The remedy for the just complaint of 
Dr. Chatterjee 1 is, not to strengthen the mission by 
adding a few natives to it, but to strengthen the Church 
by giving it more of the power that has hitherto been 
centralized in the mission. 

Self-Support Limited. The other questions are more 
difficult than they appear to be. When we say that a 
church is self-supporting, we ordinarily mean its abil- 
ity to maintain its own services and pay its ministers. 
Elementary schools also are usually supported locally 
in such circumstances. But this is not all of Christian 
work in a given land. There must be academies, col- 
leges, and several kinds of professional schools. More- 
over, as we noted in another chapter, in a country 

*See page 170. 




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RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 185 

where there is no sense of responsibility for the care 
of the dependent and defective classes, the missionary 
enterprise must include hospitals and institutions for the 
blind, insane, deaf-mutes, orphans, lepers, and fallen 
women. A native staff must be trained for these also. 
Medical colleges and nurses' training schools partic- 
ularly are required. 

Administering Institutional Funds. All these estab- 
lishments call for expensive plants, and the cost of 
maintenance is heavy even after making allowance for 
fees and gifts on the field. Colleges, hospitals, and 
asylums are not self-supporting in America but are 
obliged to depend largely upon donations. America 
has a Christian constituency from which such dona- 
tions can be sought; but it will be a long time before 
the churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America can 
provide the large sums that are needed. Meantime, 
the millions of dollars that are raised in Europe and 
America for these institutions must be locally managed 
by the missionaries, whose number in most fields in- 
cludes men who have special qualifications in business 
matters. Some boards send out carefully selected lay- 
men for this purpose. It is clear that the administra- 
tion of these great sums, under present conditions, 
cannot be wisely transferred to churches recruited 
from the rude tribes of central Africa, the hill men 
of northern Siam, or the unsophisticated peasants of 
Korea. A church may have all the faith and devotion 
that we have described in a preceding chapter without 
having the training in the use of money that would 



186 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

make it a prudent administrator of the monies sent 
from abroad. Is it rational to expect that the most 
sanctified Asiatic Christians, whose wages are fifteen 
cents a day, could intelligently vote upon the use of 
sixty thousand dollars a year of other people's money? 
A mission board has to be as careful in handling the 
trust funds committed to it as a bank in handling the 
funds of depositors. Any lack of the most careful 
business methods would forfeit the confidence of givers 
and cut off supplies. A board therefore must adminis- 
ter this money through local agents who are not only 
chosen for that purpose but who are amenable to its 
control as a missionary is and a native Christian is 
not. 

On the other hand, if missionaries retain in their 
own hands absolute control of the money that is neces- 
sary for the large and varied work, their power is apt 
to be considered by the native Christians as the power 
of money; and we in America, who resent the attempt 
of any one to rule us because he has more money than 
we have, can understand how the Christians feel. It 
will be readily understood that questions of the most 
perplexing character are here involved. 

Efforts at Adjustment. Boards and missions are 
trying to solve the problem by sharing administrative 
responsibility with the native Church wherever it is 
fitted to assume such responsibility. This seems to be 
an easy solution. But who is to be the judge of such 
fitness, the foreigner or the native? Aye, there's the 
rub. The trend of practise is indicated by the follow- 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 187 

ing extract from a deliverance of one mission board : 
"The time has come in some of the missions, and it is 
rapidly coming in others, when the native churches 
should be given a larger share of privilege and respon- 
sibility in the conduct and support of evangelistic work, 
the selection of evangelists, etc., than now exists in 
many places ; and consideration should be given to the 
inclusion of natives in the local managing boards of 
some educational institutions. . . . The board is cor- 
dially prepared to approve the appointment of repre- 
sentative advisory committees of Christians in each 
station to share in estimating and administering funds 
wherever there is a local church regularly organized 
with an ordained pastor on a self-supporting basis. The 
board suggests that such representatives be chosen, not 
by the station or mission, but by the properly author- 
ized body of the churches, and that the proportion of 
such representatives be the proportion which the con- 
tributions of the churches sustain to the contributions 
of the board and the mission." 

It will help us here if we remind ourselves again that 
the ultimate object of the foreign missionary enter- 
prise is to establish the Church, and that this aim 
should be a definite factor in the solution of our prob- 
lems. We should hold resolutely in view the prin- 
ciple that the mission should be a temporary and dimin- 
ishingly authoritative body, and that the Church should 
be the permanent and increasingly authoritative body. 
Even though the mission remains a century or more, 
as it must in some lands, this fundamental distinction 



188 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

should not be overlooked. A policy which centers 
all power in foreign lands until aggressive native 
churches compel it to let go is radically unsound. 

It would be a help to a mission board to know how 
its supporters in the home churches feel on this sub- 
ject. To what extent do the readers of these pages 
desire their mission boards, which are amenable to their 
legal and ecclesiastical control, to retain the adminis- 
tration of the money which they give; and to what 
extent are they willing to release the boards from re- 
sponsibility by having them turn over the money to 
bodies of Asiatic and African Christians who are not 
amenable to their control? Granting that this should 
be done under certain conditions, what are those con- 
ditions ? 

Question of Creed and Polity. What shall be the 
creed and polity of the native Church? How far shall 
the missionary seek to shape them to his own ideas? 
These questions are difficult and delicate. The mis- 
sionary from the West, trained in the tenets of a par- 
ticular denomination, born and bred to regard its 
doctrinal statements and form of government as most 
in accord with the Word of God, is apt to feel that 
they should be repeated on the foreign field. 

But should they? Is it our object to carry molds or 
to plant seed? We must recognize the right of each 
autonomous body of Christians to determine some 
things for itself. We do not want the churches in the 
mission fields to be our theological phonographs, 
mechanically repeating what we speak into them. We 




CHINESE WORKERS IN CITY EVANGELIZATION 
ORDAINED ZULU PASTORS 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 189 

cannot, indeed, ignore the risks that are involved. 
There is sometimes ground for anxiety. Will the 
rising churches on the mission field be soundly evan- 
gelical ? God grant that they may be. But who is to be 
the judge of soundness ? And in respect of undoubted 
doctrines, to what extent should we impose our west- 
ern terminology upon eastern churches? We should 
remember that, in the course of nearly two thousand 
years, external Christianity has taken on some of the 
characteristics of the white races, and that we who 
have inherited these characteristics have more or less 
unconsciously identified them with essentials. Perhaps 
this is one reason why Christianity is so often called 
by the Chinese "the foreigner's religion." 

Our creeds were formed in times of heated contro- 
versy, and their statements are massed in such a way 
as to be effective against the particular errors which 
were then prevailing. The result is that some of these 
creed-s are impregnable fortifications on sides from 
which no special attack is likely to be made in present- 
day Asia or Africa, while other positions, which are 
seriously menaced, are unguarded. 

It is difficult for us to realize to what an extent our 
theological thought has been influenced by our western 
environment and the polemical struggles through which 
we have passed. The Oriental, not having passed 
through those controversies, knowing little and caring 
less about them, and having other controversies of his 
own, may not find our forms exactly suited to him. It 
seems not only just to Asiatic Christians but in the in- 



190 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

terest of evangelical truth that the churches in the mis- 
sion field should be allowed to frame their creeds as we 
have been allowed to frame ours. 

Assumptions to Avoid. Some thoughtful men fear 
that many errors may find lodgment in the native 
Churches unless the older and wiser Churches of the 
West retain control. This fear may have justification 
in Some places. I would not minimize the gravity of 
the question or the perils of premature independence. 

Nevertheless, I look upon the growing power and 
independence of the churches in the mission field, not 
indeed without some anxiety, and yet, on the whole, 
with gratification and devout thanksgiving to God. 
They have made mistakes, and doubtless they will make 
more. The churches to which St. Paul wrote in the 
first century made them, and so have the churches in 
Europe and America. They may promulgate some 
doctrines and interpretations of the Bible which we 
regard as unsound ; but are there no ministers and lay- 
men in America who are doing this ? Are our western 
churches so uniformly free from error that we are 
willing to make them ideals which the churches in the 
mission field should imitate? When w r e remember 
all the vagaries and heresies that thrive like weeds in 
the western mind, we may feel that it is better to recog- 
nize as soon as possible the autonomy of the churches 
in the mission field in the hope that they will not perpet- 
uate our mistakes but will form a better type of Chris- 
tianity than we have presented to them. 

We should avoid four fundamental assumptions; 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 191 

first, that we need to be afraid of our avowed aim 
to establish the Church; second, that the churches in 
Asia and Africa must be conformed to the churches in 
Europe and America ; third, that we are responsible for 
all the future mistakes of a Church which we have 
once founded; fourth, that Christ who "purchased" 1 
the Church and who is its Head 2 cannot be trusted to 
guide it. 

Call for Larger Faith. "Is there never to be a 
period/' exclaimed the Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, "when 
the Christianity which we plant shall be able with God's 
help to stand alone? Is it like some sickly plant that 
must forever be tied up to a stick? We must assume 
that Christ is able to care for his Church after we have 
planted it and duly nurtured it. We cannot be for- 
ever responsible for the orthodoxy of Japan. We must 
leave the Japanese Church under the direction of God's 
omnipotent Spirit to work out its own religious life. 
We cannot proceed on any other principle." 

Let us have faith in our brethren and faith in God. 
When Christ said that he would be with his disciples 
always, he meant his disciples in Asia and Africa as 
well as in Europe and America. The operations of the 
Holy Spirit are not confined to the white races. Are 
we to take no account of his guidance? He is still in 
the world and will not forsake his own. We should 
plant in non-Christian lands the fundamental principles 
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then give the native 
Church reasonable freedom to make some adaptations 

2 Acts xx. 28. 2 Col. i. 18. 



192 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

for itself. If, in the exercise of that freedom, it does 

some things that we deprecate, let us not be frightened 

or imagine that our work has been in vain. Some of 

the acts which impress us as wrong may not be so 

wrong in themselves as we imagine, but simply due to 

different ways of serving the same purpose. The Bible 

was written by Asiatics and in an Asiatic language. 

Christ himself was an Asiatic. Perhaps we of the 

West have not fully understood that Asiatic Bible, and 

it may be that, by the guidance of God's Spirit within 

the rising churches of Asia and Africa, a more perfect 

interpretation of Christ may be made known to the 

world. 

Principles Appearing 

Rule of the People. In church government our 
American ideas of the sovereignty of the people have 
given us, in both Church and state, forms of govern- 
ment that have grown out of long emphasis upon the 
doctrine that "all men are created free and equal." 
Accordingly our church organizations are either demo- 
cratic or representative, the people being supreme in 
both cases. 

When these forms are transplanted to lands that 
have never had such training in equality of human 
rights, perplexities quickly develop. As a matter of 
fact neither the democratic nor the representative form 
of church organization is in unmodified operation on 
the average mission field, for the reason that the typical 
missionary, whatever his title, necessarily has exercised 
the functions of a superintendent or bishop. For this 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 193 

reason it is difficult to make an accurate list of inde- 
pendent churches. 

The outstanding ones are few. Perhaps the most 
conspicuous is The Church of Christ in Japan, which 
is exclusively Japanese in organization and control. 
This is partly because of the ambitious and independent 
temperament of the Japanese; partly because many of 
the Christians are of the Samurai, the old knightly 
class which has given Japan the majority of its army 
and navy officers and its leaders in politics and the 
learned professions. While approximately one person 
in every thousand of the population is a Christian, one 
in every hundred of the educated classes is a Christian, 
and the membership of the churches includes prominent 
lawyers, editors of leading journals, members of the 
imperial diet, and men of high military and naval rank. 
It was to be expected that the relation of the Church to 
the foreign missions Avould first become acute among 
a people of this kind. 1 

As a rule, however, the churches in the mission field 
are in a period of transition, gradually moving out of 
the era of foreign control into the era of native control. 
Even where the theory of church government or. mis- 
sion policy of a given communion places all power 
in the hands of the Church as distinguished from an 
organized mission, the individual missionaries are 
usually members of the churches on the field and per- 



*See the author's article, "The Relation of Church and Mission 
in Japan," in the International Review of Missions, October, 
1913. 



194 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

sonally dominate their policies and methods by sheer 
weight of superior training and ability. Such a system 
is impossible of continuance much longer. No sound 
Scriptural theory of the Church recognizes the domina- 
tion of believers in one country by resident aliens who 
preserve their separate racial organization and connec- 
tions and who are responsible for their acts to a board 
and Church in another country. 

A New Principle. What kind of domination will 
be substituted remains to be seen. Government by 
the people, either directly or through representatives 
whom they choose and hold to accountability, is not 
easily put into smooth operation in nations that have 
been accustomed for two or three thousand years to 
the rule of kings by divine right and of the lesser 
officials whom the kings appoint. The Chinese have 
long exercised a larger degree of self-government than 
any other non-Christian people; but even in China 
democracy and monarchy were inextricably mixed — 
villages governed by elders, provinces ruled by officials 
who, although gaining position through competitive 
examinations, wielded despotic power, and the nation 
by an emperor who was called "the Son of Heaven/ ' 
Republicanism has now been adopted as the form of 
government ; but the effort to secure efficient provincial 
and national assemblies of representatives elected by 
the people has not been successful thus far, and Presi- 
dent Yuan Shih-kai has been compelled to assume the 
powers of a virtual dictator in order to keep the Re- 
public from falling to pieces. The Chinese will 




UNIVERSITY OF NANKING IN WHICH SEVEN 
DENOMINATIONS ARE COOPERATING 

Science Building 
Faculty of Language School 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 195 

undoubtedly work out the problem, but time will be 
required to do it. 

These political ideas interact with ecclesiastical ideas. 
No one can yet tell just what form of church polity the 
churches in the mission field will ultimately settle upon, 
or just how native characteristics of life and thought 
will affect the rising churches in non-Christian lands. 
Already we can observe the influence of inherited 
ideas and national traits to which we referred in chap- 
ter IV. Doubtless Japanese, Chinese, East Indian, 
Persian, African, and Latin American types will be- 
come as distinct as Scotch, Welsh, English, French, 
German, Canadian, and American types. 

The Church Missionary Society sensibly declared, in 
1886, that "this Society deprecates any measure of 
church organization which may tend permanently to 
subject the native church units in India to the forma- 
tion and arrangements of the national and established 
Church of a far distant and very different country, and 
therefore desires that all present arrangements for 
church organization should remain as elastic as pos- 
sible, until the native Christians themselves shall be 
numerous and powerful enough to have a dominant 
voice in the formation of an ecclesiastical constitution 
on lines suitable to the Indian people." 

Values in Western Views. Recognition of this 
freedom does not imply that our creeds and interpreta- 
tions of Scripture are wrong, or that we should object 
to their adoption by the churches in non-Christian 
lands. We may fairly claim that many centuries of 



196 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

Bible study and Christian experience have taught the 
churches of Europe and America more than it is rea- 
sonable to expect the rising churches in non-Christian 
lands to acquire in one or two generations. Let us give 
them the full benefit of all that we have gained at such 
heavy cost. It would be most unbrotherly to leave 
them to stumble without guidance along the rocky path 
in which we have had so many falls. But it is one thing 
to give them the information and the counsel, and quite 
another thing to impose them as if we were infallible 
and authoritative interpreters of truth. Grant that it 
is too soon to expect much independent thinking on 
the profound themes of theology and its related philos- 
ophies, and that for some time yet the young churches 
will reproduce more or less closely the ideas that the 
missionaries inculcate. If this is true, it is all the 
more important that those ideas should concern the 
substance of Christianity rather than the external and 
artificial forms with which we have clothed it. The 
Anglican Bishop of Oxford expressed a truth that is 
applicable to other churches as well as his when he 
said: "There is a very specific Anglican color about 
our home religion which we ought to have no desire 
to perpetuate in India. An Englishman, wherever he 
goes, is apt to identify his religion with his memories 
of home. We ought to identify our religion with the 
Christ of all nations/ ? 

Denominationalism Restricted. Two contrasting 
opinions are urged regarding this subject. One is that 
foreign missions should be the extension of the de- 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 197 

nomination throughout the world, including its dis- 
tinctive tenets and ecclesiastical forms. The other is 
that foreign missions should be the communication of 
the essential truths of New Testament teaching without 
special reference to a denominational interpretation, 
the churches in the mission field being encouraged to 
develop their own creeds and forms of organization or 
to make such adaptations of western ones as the spirit 
of God may indicate. 

The first opinion was more common a generation 
ago than it is to-day, but it is still held by some devoted 
men who generously support the missionary work of 
their respective churches. 

Growth of Better View. The other opinion is held 
by increasing numbers of missionaries and their sup- 
porters and is more and more coming to be a charac- 
teristic of the foreign missionary movement as a whole. 
If we are to extend the denomination, which denomina- 
tion? Which one or ones of the 170 in the United 
States and the 183 in Great Britain? Picture the relig- 
ious chaos on the foreign field if these home divi- 
sions are to be emphasized. I cannot believe that it is 
our duty to perpetuate in Asia and Africa the sectarian 
divisions of Europe and America. Why should the 
Christians of Korea be divided into Northern Meth- 
odists and Southern Methodists because a civil war 
was waged in the United States half a century ago? 
Why should the Christians of India be labeled English 
Wesleyans, German Lutherans, and American Bap- 
tists? Imagine a Dutch Reformed Chinese! Surely 



198 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

this would be sectarianism gone to seed, if indeed it 
would not approximate one of the sins for which Christ 
rebuked the scribes and Pharisees. 

A prominent clergyman told me that he doubted 
the wisdom of a union of the Asiatic churches as it 
might weaken the sense of responsibility of the home 
churches to support mission work. He thought that 
a denomination in America would take a deeper interest 
in a comparatively small native Church wholly de- 
pendent upon it than it would in an indeterminate part 
of a larger Church. Must then the unity of the churches 
of Asia be sacrificed to the divisions of American and 
European churches? Shall we buy their dependence 
with foreign gold and nullify our hope of developing 
their self-support? The majority of missionary con- 
stituencies with which I am familiar take no such 
position. They do not want their boards to conduct 
a sectarian propaganda and would diminish their gifts 
if the boards did conduct it. Where donors do de- 
mand it as a condition of support and cannot be per- 
suaded to take a broader view, it would be far better 
for the cause of Christ for a board to reply: "Thy 
silver perish with thee!" than to accept gifts on terms 
which would rivet western sectarian chains on the 
limbs of the growing eastern churches. 

Boards on Union. It would be interesting to col- 
late the policies of the missionary boards on the ques- 
tion of denominational extension as contrasted with 
cooperation and union. Space limits permit only a few 
citations. The American Presbyterian Board (North- 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 199 

ern) voted, May 15, 1900: "Believing that the time has 
come for a yet larger measure of union and cooperation 
in missionary work, the board would ask the General 
Assembly to approve its course in recommending to its 
missions in various lands that they encourage as far as 
practicable the formation of union churches, in which 
the results of the mission work of all allied evangelical 
churches should be gathered, and that they observe 
everywhere the most generous principles of missionary 
comity. In the view of the board the object of the 
foreign missionary enterprise is not to perpetuate on 
the mission field the denominational distinctions of 
Christendom, but to build upon Scriptural lines and 
according to Scriptural methods the kingdom of our 
Lord Jesus Christ. Fellowship and union among na- 
tive Christians of whatever name should be encouraged 
in every possible way, with a view to that unity of all 
disciples for which our Lord prayed and to which all 
mission effort should contribute." The General As- 
sembly approved this deliverance. 

The American Baptist Board, September, 191 2, in- 
cluded the following in a statement of "general 
policy" : "That to the utmost practical extent there 
should be cooperation with other Christian bodies 
working in the same fields. Such cooperation is of 
special importance in the department of higher educa- 
tion, where students are relatively few and education 
expensive." This declaration was approved by the 
Northern Baptist Convention of May, 1913, which put 
forth a memorable statement in which it professed 



200 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

"both willingness and humility to learn from others any 
aspects of the way of life which we may not have held 
in due proportion." Secretaries of the missionary 
boards of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
Southern Presbyterian, Congregational, Disciples, and 
several other Churches, write to the common effect that 
while their respective boards have not formulated their 
policy in general statements, they are "heartily in favor 
of union and cooperation" and "have repeatedly ex- 
pressed it in concrete cases," which are "always con- 
sidered from the view-point of sympathy for the prin- 
ciple." The Rev. James L. Barton has publicly 
stated that "the American Board of Commission- 
ers for Foreign Missions has repeatedly committed 
itself to any and every practical plan of cooperation 
which was within the limits of its financial resources, 
believing that its work in Asia and Africa is not to build 
up a Church according to any set model, but that it is to 
cooperate with other Christian workers in the establish- 
ment of the living Church of Jesus Christ as the center 
of power and life and redemption for all men." 

The Rev. Junius B. Remensnyder, ex-President of 
the General Synod of the Lutheran Church in the 
United States of America, writes: "The Lutherans 
believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. Con- 
sequently the divisions of Protestantism are held to 
be against the teachings, wishes, and prayers of Christ 
and a great obstacle to the growth and blessed influence 
of Christianity. And while not willing to compromise 
any doctrine essential and vital, the Lutheran Church 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 201 

would go to the extremest limit that conscience will 
allow to achieve the glorious end of the union of all 
the true disciples of Christ of whatever name into one 
unbroken fellowship in a universal kingdom of God." 1 
The boards of some other communions, while cher- 
ishing the same ideals of Christian unity and church 
development, do not feel free, under present condi- 
tions, to commit themselves to the same forms of 
statement and method. The Southern Baptist churches 
may be considered fairly representative of this point 
of view. They have carefully explained their position 
in a "Pronouncement on Christian Union" issued by the 
Convention of 19 14, in which, after setting forth their 
convictions which they deem it their duty to guard, 
they add : "It follows from all that has been said that, 
as we regard the matter, the interests of Christian unity 
cannot be best promoted by a policy of compromise. 
Much good will come of fraternal conference and inter- 
change of view. There will no doubt gradually arise 
far greater unity of conviction than exists now. But 
this cannot be artificially produced or made to order. 
A deepening and enriching of the life in Christ among 
Christians of all names are a prime condition. Groups 
of Christian bodies which stand nearest each other 
can first come to an understanding. The desire and 
prayer for the coming of Christ's kingdom on earth 
will more and more intensify the spiritual unity of his 
people. We hereby avow T in the most emphatic manner 

1 Article, "How the Lutherans Look at Christian Unity," in 
the Christian Work, November 28, 1914. 



202 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

our desire and willingness to cooperate in all practicable 
ways in every cause of righteousness. We join hands 
with Christians of all names in seeking these common 
ends. :We ask no one to compromise his convictions in 
joining us in such movements, and we ask only that our 
own be respected. We firmly believe there are ways 
by which all men who stand together for righteousness 
may make their power felt without invading the cher- 
ished convictions of any fellow worker. Mutual con- 
sideration and respect lie at the basis of all cooperative 
work. We firmly believe that a way may be found 
through the maze of divided Christendom out into 
the open spaces of Christian union only as the people 
of Christ follow the golden thread -of an earnest desire 
to know and to do his will." x 

The Inspiring Thought. Beneath all the perplexing 
questions of relationship, form, and method lies the 
deeper and more comforting fact that God is raising 
up a people unto himself throughout that great section 
of our world which we have been wont to call non- 
Christian. No longer can Asia, Africa, the islands of 
the sea, and great sections of Latin America be painted 
in unrelieved black as contrasted with the white sec- 
tions which are occupied by the alleged Christian na- 
tions. Already there are light places in nearly all of 



1 Some of the material of these pages has been taken from the 
author's book entitled, Unity and Missions: Can a Divided 
Church Save the World ? Compare that book for a fuller dis- 
cussion of the subject of union and cooperation and its related 
problems. 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 203 

the countries of the world. Even darkest Africa has 
thousands of groups of people who have looked unto 
him and are radiant with the reflected light from the 
Sun of righteousness. 1 Lowly people they are, for the 
most part, poor in this world's goods, childlike in the 
simplicity of their faith and love; but they are wit- 
nessing for Christ with a joy and fidelity which should 
move our hearts to sympathetic love and admiration. 
Once more the Spirit of God is moving upon the face 
of the waters and once more a new created world is 
emerging. In this period of awakening and recon- 
struction we of the home churches as well as those on 
the field, are called upon to show breadth of mind, free- 
dom from racial and sectarian prejudice, catholicity of 
spirit, and a confident faith that the living Christ will 
continue to dwell within his Church in every land. 

The Spiritual Dynamic — Not Organization. We 
should bear in mind throughout all our study that the 
church is preeminently a spiritual body and that its 
interests can be best advanced by the spiritual 
methods of prayer and consecrated effort and giving. 
Organization, however complete and efficient, cannot 
make a church. It is necessary to the work of the 
church, but in itself it is like a locomotive without 
steam. The usefulness of an engine depends not only 
upon the perfection of its mechanism but upon the 
power that utilizes it. Without power, the engine 
can accomplish nothing, cannot even move itself. The 
most highly developed ecclesiastical organizations have 

^sa. xxxiv. 5. 



204 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

seldom been those which exerted the largest spiritual 
influence 

Not Money. Nor can money in itself create a 
church. Of course money, like organization, is neces- 
sary. We are painfully aware that a great deal more 
of it is urgently needed. However spiritual-minded 
the missionary may be, his traveling expenses must be 
paid and his food and clothing bought. Residences, 
schools, hospitals, and other requisites of missionary 
work, must be paid for in hard cash. We should not 
be understood as lessening the heavy sense of respon- 
sibility that Christians in America and Europe should 
give systematically and in proportion to their means. 
Prayers and sympathy will avail little if they do not 
find expression in consecrated giving. 

But there is danger that in this commercial age the 
evangelization of the world may be conceived of as 
merely a question of mechanics and finance. A board 
is often told that if missionaries could have a sufficient 
appropriation, they could evangelize their fields in a 
short time. Hundreds of addresses and appeals em- 
body this argument, not infrequently figuring out just 
how much money the realization of our aim would cost. 
But what shall we say of such home cities as London, 
New York, and Chicago, in each of which thousands 
of salaried Christian workers are employed and mil- 
lions of dollars are expended annually in church work, 
but whose moral conditions are a reproach and a heart- 
break to the Christians who live in them? 

On the other hand some of the mightiest manifesta- 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 205 

tions of the power of God have been largely inde- 
pendent of external means. The great results in 
Korea have been ascribed to the fact that the boards 
poured men and money into it and that corresponding 
results could have been obtained elsewhere if the boards 
had adopted a like policy. The reverse is true. The 
revivals preceded the pouring in of money, the latter 
being sent to take care of a work that had already 
developed. But afterwards, when the missions, with 
greatly enlarged force and appropriations, tried to 
make the greatest revival of all, it did not equal the 
revivals of earlier days when human resources were 
smaller. An Africa mission has had almost phenom- 
enal spiritual blessing during the last six years until 
its reports have come to be an inspiration to all who 
read them; but its annual budget is about the same as 
it was before. The most remarkable revival that 
China has ever witnessed came through the preaching 
of a Chinese minister without an additional dollar 
from abroad. Conversely, experience shows that, when 
European and American churches have had the most 
money, they have been most formal and barren. Ample 
funds secure pomp and architecture and nominal ad- 
herents but not real spiritual achievement. 

Some of our splendid laymen, accustomed to bring- 
ing big business enterprises to pass by the use of ample 
capital, are apparently under the impression that the 
success of the foreign missionary enterprise is chiefly 
a matter of capitalization. I heard one of them give 
a vivid description of the appalling conditions in a 



206 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

certain country, and argue that if we would put suffi- 
cient money into it, we could reproduce the results 
that have been achieved in the most fruitful fields. 
And yet that field is one on which the Roman Catholic 
Church has spent millions of dollars. The principal 
city, which is only of moderate size, has a magnificent 
cathedral and nineteen other great churches. Every 
town in the whole country has an expensive edifice, 
while schools, priests, monks, and nuns are numbered 
by hundreds. Yet the spiritual state is so utterly dead 
and the moral condition so completely rotten that there 
is no hope of relief except as the Protestant Churches 
send a few missionaries, not to duplicate the expendi- 
ture of the Roman Catholic Church, but to preach and 
exemplify that kind of spiritual life which money and 
numbers cannot convey. 

Do we not need to remind ourselves that the grace 
of God cannot be bought; that the evangelization of 
the world is not primarily a matter of dollars or 
machinery? The book of Jonah shows what tre- 
mendous results God can achieve through one solitary 
man, and not an ideal man either. It would be lamen- 
table if we were to commercialize the missionary 
appeal and the missionary enterprise, lamentable if we 
were to feel that gold in any amount can bring a people 
to Christ. 

From apostolic days to the present, Christian workers 
never have had enough material resources from a 
human view-point, and the probabilities are that they 
never will have. God is not limited by our human 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 207 

methods, and he often works most wondrously with 
what appear to us to be scanty material resources. Men 
are so constituted that they do their best work under 
pressure and have most faith in God when human aid 
seems most inadequate. The stony soil and stern win- 
ters of New England developed more virile men than 

Ceylon 

"Where every prospect pleases 

And only man is vile." 

Money in Its Place. These considerations do not 
form an excuse for the selfish withholding of money. 
I say again that a great deal more of it is urgently 
needed. The Bible strongly emphasizes the duty and 
privilege of giving. God has chosen to work through 
our gifts as well as through our prayers, and he will 
accept no plea for our neglect. There is hardly a mis- 
sion station in the world that has adequate equipment. 
One physician in a hospital and one teacher in a school, 
with small, meagerly furnished buildings and one or 
two half trained native assistants, cannot work to the 
best advantage. The evangelistic force is equally 
scanty. While boards and missionaries are careful to 
follow sound principles of administration, we are far, 
very far indeed, from the time when the calls upon the 
home churches can be lessened an iota. Rather must 
they be heavily increased if we are to discharge the 
duty that God has laid upon us. But we should never 
forget that organization and money of themselves have 
not saved our home lands and that they will not save 
foreign lands. Human resources will be a vain reliance 



208 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

unless they are used of God. This is a money-mad age. 
Let us be on guard that its mammon- frenzy does not 
infect our work, and let us be careful to place heaviest 
emphasis on the spiritual power which alone can vital- 
ize our contributions and our toil. The love of money 
may be the root of all evil in missions as in other things. 

The effective missionary address must include in- 
formation as to the additional support that is required, 
so that hearers will know what they should do; but 
such information will accomplish nothing unless the 
spiritual interest has been aroused, the spiritual motive 
made powerfully operative, and men made to feel the 
inspiring privilege of becoming coworkers together 
with God in saving and helping their fellow men. The 
experience of a hundred years has proved conclusively 
that kindly humanitarian concern and mere pity for 
those who are worse off than we are are not adequate 
foundations for missionary work. They result in 
occasional and sporadic gifts for some particular in- 
stitution or individual that may have aroused tem- 
porary interest; but they lack the staying power that 4 " 
is required for a solid and enduring service through 
good and through evil report and for all the varied 
activities involved in the missionary enterprise, attrac- 
tive or unattractive. Mission boards have learned that 
they can permanently depend only upon those Chris- 
tians who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, 
who support mission work from spiritual motives, and 
who give their time and money for Christ's sake. 

Prayer and Consecration. Face to face with the 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 209 

tremendous opportunities in the non-Christian world, 
the immense work to be done, and the inadequate facili- 
ties for doing it, the preeminent need of the churches 
both at home and abroad is greater spiritual power. 
Foreign mission work needs more than double its 
present staff and equipment; but it needs a hundred 
times more prayer and consecration in those who 
support it in the home churches as well as in those 
who conduct it in board offices and on the field. It 
is as true of the difficulties which confront the disciples 
to-day as it was in the first century of the Christian 
era, that "this kind can come out by nothing, save by 
prayer." Dr. John R. Mott said at the World Mission- 
ary Conference in Edinburgh : "From my first world 
trip I came back saying we must have thousands of 
more missionaries. After my second trip, I said we 
must have scores of thousands of native workers. 
After my third trip I gave up talking figures. The 
evangelization of the world is not a question of 
mathematics but of dynamics. A few men full of the 
Holy Spirit will upset whole calculations." "Not by 
might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith Jehovah 
of hosts." 1 

The vital question for us to face therefore is not 
so much one of mechanics and finances as of spiritual 
power. Are we facing our problems and opportunities 
with sufficient courage and faith? Are we dedicating 
ourselves unreservedly to the service of Christ, obtain- 
ing all the spiritual power that God makes accessible 

^ech. iv. 6. 



210 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

to us, and doing our utmost to make Jesus Christ intel- 
ligently known to all whom we can reach? These 
questions should be pressed to the utmost limit. There 
are vast areas in the spiritual realm which few of us 
have yet explored. We stand wistfully on the border 
of that realm, burdened in spirit because we know so 
little of it, contrite of heart as we reflect that we alone 
are to blame for the shadows that obscure our vision, 
and looking eagerly toward the beckoning hand of him 
who withholdeth not but waiteth to be gracious. In 
this holy quest we are one with all those who in every 
age and land have sought to know the mind of Christ 
more perfectly and to do the divine will "as in heaven, 
so on earth." 

Love Awakened. The more I learn of the Chris- 
tians in the mission field, the more I respect and love 
them. I had expected to find intelligence in the Japa- 
nese leaders, for I knew that many of them come from 
the higher classes. But I confess that I was sur- 
prised by what I learned in Korea, China, Siam, 
Burma, India, Syria, Egypt, and the Philippines. Most 
of the Christians in these countries have come from 
the lower strata of society. I am not unmindful that 
some are from the upper classes and that the number 
is now increasing. But the average type is that of the 
village peasant and small shopkeeper. Comparatively 
few had any education or social advantages prior to 
their baptism. Mission schools are now turning out 
a larger proportion of educated men. But the ma- 




ft n. 

la i 







STUDENT VOLUNTEERS FOR HOME MISSIONS 



Shantung Christian University 
University of Nanking 



RELATION TO MISSIONS AND CHURCHES 211 

jority of the believers still belong to the first generation 
of Christians. As I met the average types in villages 
and cities, churches and homes, I was profoundly im- 
pressed by their sincerity and devotion. 

Clear Witnesses. One Saturday evening, after a 
hot and dusty journey, we arrived at an isolated sta- 
tion. As I was tired and the hour was late, I did not 
expect to meet the Christians that night. Learning, 
however, that many of them had assembled in the 
church and were waiting for me, I went over and, after 
speaking briefly, I asked them to tell me in their own 
way what they had found in Christ that led them to 
love and serve him. One after another those men rose 
and answered my question. I jotted down their replies 
and find the following in my note-book : "Deliverance 
from sin," "forgiveness," "peace," "guidance," 
"strength," "power to do," "joy," "comfort," "eternal 
life." Surely these earnest disciples had found some- 
thing of value in Christ ! As we bowed together in a 
closing prayer, my heart went out to them as to those 
who, with few r er advantages than I had enjoyed, had 
nevertheless learned more than I of the deep things 
of God. 

Like the New Testament Churches. The scattered 
churches in the mission field to-day are in about the 
same position as the churches of the first century to 
which the inspired writers addressed their Epistles. 
They, too, were poor and lowly people in the midst of 
a scoffing and hostile world. The rich and the great 
heeded them not, and fidelity to Christ often meant 



212 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

trials that were hard to bear. To them the apostles 
wrote, expressing the love which they bore them, their 
anxiety as they considered the problems and tempta- 
tions which the followers of Christ were facing, and 
yet their unfaltering faith that God would guide his 
people aright. We reread those Epistles from day 
to day as we journeyed among the churches in Asia, 
and we were impressed by the similarity of ancient 
and modern conditions. All of us will gain a better 
understanding both of the Epistles and of the churches 
in the mission field, if we study the Epistles from this 
point of view. The apostles could hardly have written 
differently if they had directly addressed the churches 
in non-Christian lands in the twentieth century. The 
little companies of believers in Rome, Corinth, and 
Thessalonica and the "sojourners of the Dispersion in 
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," are 
reproduced to-day in the churches of Africa, Asia, 
South America, and the islands of the sea. We may 
say of each of them what the Rev. J. Campbell 
Gibson said of the Church in China: 'Everything is 
hostile to it [the Church]. It is striking its roots in an 
uncongenial soil and breathes a polluted air. It may 
justly claim for itself the beautiful emblem so happily 
seized, though so poorly justified, by Buddhism — the 
emblem of the lotus. It roots itself in rotten mud, 
thrusts up the spears of its leaves and blossoms through 
the foul and stagnant water, and lifts its spotless petals 
over all, holding them up pure, stainless, and fragrant 
in the face of a burning and pitiless sun. So it is with 



RELATION TO THE CHURCHES OF THE WEST 213 

the Christian life in China. Its existence there is a 
continuous miracle of life, of life more abundant." l 

Our Duty to Help. Christians at home should have 
a deeper sense of the duty and privilege of strengthen- 
ing the missionary work which represents our coopera- 
tion with these churches in the mission field. Recogni- 
tion of their rights does not lighten our obligation in the 
slightest degree. Do we not owe as much to a brother 
as to a servant ? Indeed, does not the change of rela- 
tionship strengthen our feeling of responsibility? We 
count it so in our personal relationships at home, and 
the Church is the family of God. 2 These churches are 
our younger brothers, growing rapidly, but most of 
them not yet able to walk alone, and even the strongest 
needing our assistance in many ways. The most ambi- 
tious and independent of them frankly tell us that they 
will require our help for a long time to come. Said 
the late Bishop Honda, of Japan: "Not to advance 
your present work there is out of the question. From 
the depth of my heart I request you to go on. The 
united new Church is struggling for self-support and 
has not power to advance ; so it is absolutely necessary 
to have the missionaries work for the unevangelized 
places. If the board of missions has an idea to with- 
draw from Japan, it is a great mistake. I hope your 
Mission Council will do all in their power to explain 
the real situation to the board and churches at home 
and the enormous need of missionary work." 

^Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China, 240. 
a Gal. vi. 10; Eph. ii. 19; iii. 15. 



214 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

The Waiting Millions. A Church may support and 
govern itself and be zealous in making Christ known 
to the people of its local communities ; but what about 
the training of its ministry, and what about the tens of 
millions of unreached peoples in other parts of the same 
country? How can 100,000 Japanese Protestant 
Christians, however energetic and devoted they are, 
evangelize a population of 53,000,000, or 1,655,000 in 
India evangelize 315,000,000, or 500,000 in Africa 
evangelize 130,000,000? Shall we leave nine hundred 
and ninety millions of souls of this generation to die 
without Christ because there are native churches that 
might make him known to the remaining ten millions ? 

The land that yet remaineth to be possessed! How 
the churches in the mission field need our help in pos- 
sessing it for Christ! Many a night during our jour- 
neys in Asia we had a picture in lights and shades of the 
spiritual condition of the non-Christian world. A 
humble church was filled with believers who were 
rejoicing within the pale of "his marvelous light/' 
Beyond them and crowding the doors were many 
others, not yet wholly in the light, but partially illu- 
mined by it, their eager faces turned toward the place 
from which it was shining and where a man was 
speaking of the Light of the world. Behind these 
were still others whom I could not count, standing in 
deeper shadows. Now and then a flare of the lamp 
shot a ray of light into the gloom and showed scores 
or hundreds of spectators, some indifferent, some curi- 
ous, some gravely wondering; and then the darkness 



RELATION TO THE CHURCHES OF THE WEST 215 

silently enfolded them again so that only indistinct 
masses of heavier blackness showed where an unnum- 
bered multitude was gathered. As I looked upon 
such a scene night after night, I was encouraged by 
the number of those who had come into the light, but 
I felt more deeply than ever that we, who stand in the 
brighter light, should consecrate our money and our 
lives to make the Light of the world shine more widely 
upon the multitudes that now stand "in gross dark- 
ness." 

Apostolic Greetings. I would that this book might 
bear to its readers a message of cheer and love from 
the far-off disciples in non-Christian lands. I seem to 
hear them saying: "All the saints salute you, espe- 
cially they that are of Caesar's household" — followers 
of our Lord in places where the Christian life is as 
hard to live as it was in the palace of Rome's worst 
emperor; but even there walking humbly and faith- 
fully as saints of God, and sending their Christian 
salutations over land and sea to the saints that are in 
Europe and America. St. Paul gave noble expression 
to the attitude of mind which should characterize us of 
to-day in thinking of them. He wrote of his affec- 
tionate remembrance of them; 1 his frequent supplica- 
tion in their behalf; 2 his confidence that God would 
perfect his work in them ; 3 and his longing after them 
"in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus." 4 

In like manner, should we of the West say of our 
brethren in the jmission field, as St. Paul said of his 

^Phil. i. 3, 7- 2 PM- i. 3> 4- s Phil. L 6. 4 Phil. i. 8. 



216 RISING CHURCHES IN NON-CHRISTIAN LANDS 

beloved fellow Christians in Colossse and Ephesus: 
"For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do 
not cease to pray and make request for you, that ye 
may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spir- 
itual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of 
the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every 
good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;" 1 
"till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the 
knowledge of the Son of God, . . . unto the measure 
of the stature of the fulness of Christ." 2 "Unto him 
... be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus 
unto all generations for ever and ever." 3 

x Col. i. 9, 10. 2 Eph. iv. 13. s Eph. ill 20. 



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INDEX 



INDEX 



Abdullah, tact as interpreter, 
46 

Advance not measured by 
money, 204, 205 

Africa, 205; attendance at ser- 
vices, 118; communicants and 
population, 214; transforma- 
tions of character, 119 

Africans, as simple animists, 
32; relation to Occidental 
Churches, 161, 171, 185, 186, 
189, 191 ; worthy qualities, 14, 

15 
"Agents" and "helpers," 177, 

178 
Aim, self-government, 171 ; to 

establish the Church, 187, 

191 

Aliens, missionaries in Asia, 27 

All-round gospel, 166 

American. See Baptist, Presby- 
terian, etc., mission boards 

American Board of Commis- 
sioners for Foreign Missions, 
132; favors cooperation, 200 

American Christians a stum- 
bling-block to the Japanese, 7 

American governments not al- 
ways Christian, 68 

Amiel, quoted on the man 
formed as test of a system, 
97 

Among Indian Rajahs and 
Ryots, 10, 80, 118 

"Among the Hills," by Whit- 
tier, quoted, 22 

Ancestral worship, 37 

Ancient world empires, de- 
scendants of, 42 

Anglicanism and India, 196 



Anglo-Saxon ancestors, our, 

3, 101 
Animistic or simple people, 32- 

37; barriers among, 37 
Apostles, ancient and modern, 

105, 106, 160 
Arabia, 47 
Argentina, 121 
Armenians, an eastern sect, 42, 

44 . 
Asiatics, relation to Occidental 

Churches, 161, 171, 185, 186, 

189, 191 
Attap or nipa-palm, used for 

thatching, 40 

B 

Bangkok, Christian College, 
79, no; girls' school, 1 10 

Baptist Board (American or 
Northern), favors coopera- 
tion, 199 

Baptist churches (Southern), 
guardedly approve of co- 
operation, 201, 202 

Barbaric forebears, our, 3 

Barbour, Sir David, quoted on 
Dr. Chen, 7 

Barotac, Filipino preacher at, 

94 

Barton, Rev. James L., views 
of, on cooperation, 200 

Beirut, Syrian Protestant Col- 
lege in, 122 

Beneficent work of Christian 
missions, recognition of, 106- 
110. See also Philanthropic 
work 

Bible, 47, 81, 82 } 102, 147-150, 
192; schools, study, and 
training classes, 82, 83 



227 



228 



INDEX 



Bible and Christ Asiatic, 192 
Bishop of Oxford's views on 

"Anglican color" in India, 

196 
Boardman, Dr., at Tavoy, 36 
Bolivia, 121 
Boniface among German tribes, 

3 
Boon Itt, financial sacrifice, 86 
Boxer's conversion and confes- 
sion in Pingyang-fu, 77 
Boycott, early use of the, 61 
Brahman mysticism, 38 
Brazil, 121 ; independent 

Church in, 172 
Briggs, Rev. C. W., Baptist 

missionary in Jaro, 93 
British East India Company 

unfavorable to missions, 106 
British missions, 137 
Buddhism difficult to reach, 39 
Buddhist legend, 41 
Buencamino Senor Felipe, 

quoted, 14 
Bunker, Rev. D. A., quoted, 111 
Burma, 35, 39, 104; Judson and 

Price in, 31 
Burmans, 15 
Burmese Buddhism, 39 
Burns, Robert, Carlyle's Essay 

on, referred to and quoted, 4 



Calcutta, 39 

Canton, porters' hard life, 20; 

philanthropic institutions, 

156, 157, 165 
Capen, E. C, referred to, no, 

168 
"Capitulations," in Turkey, 

abrogated, 63 
Caracas, Venezuela, converts, 

86 
Carey, William, 31 
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 4, 19 
Catherine of Sienna, quoted, 21 
Central America, 121 



Chalmers, James, 120 

Changing Chinese, The, quoted, 
21 

Chatter jee, Rev. K. C, quoted, 
170; referred to, 184 

Chef 00, Christians in, 84; 
social work in, 157 

Chen, Dr., ability as financier, 
7 

Chieng-mai, Buddhist convert 
at, 40; growth of church at, 
119; King aids mission col- 
lege at, no; work for lepers 
at, 157 

Chile, 121 

China, burden-bearers, 20, 21 ; 
independent churches, 172 ; 
mission statistics, 114, 124; 
official interest in Chris- 
tianity, 114, 115; remarkable 
revival, 205; roads, 162; 
self-governing spirit, 194 

Chinese, 7, 8 

Chinese Revolution, The, re- 
ferred to, 7 

Chosen, 55. See Korea 

Christ. See Jesus Christ 

Christian leaders in non-Chris- 
tian lands, 96, 104, 105 

Christian life, requirements 
and tests of, 51, 52, 162 

Christian Missions and Social 
Progress, referred to, 168 

"Christian" sects or clans 
lacking the Christ spirit, 42- 

44 
Christian Work, quoted, 201 
Christian work in foreign 

lands, some details of, 184, 

l8 .5 . 
Christianity, advance unnoted 

in mission lands, 1 ; forces in 

opposition, 72; not easily 

grasped by the Oriental 

mind, 28; regenerating and 

transforming power, 3-6 

Christmas Carol, by Dickens, 

quoted, 7 



INDEX 



229 



Chundra Lela, evangelist in 

India, 96 
Church Missionary Society, 

The, 195 
Church of Christ in Japan, 193 
Church, the, defined, 23, 24. 

See also Home Church, 

Native Church 
Civilization, ancestral lack of, 

3; India's claims, ancient 

and ^ medieval, 9 
Cleanliness follows conversion, 

78, 79 
Clough, Rev. John E., among 

the Telugus, 161, 168 
Colombia, 121 

Comparisons of civilizations, 3 
Compassion, a characteristic 

Christian spirit, 21, 22 
Confucianism, 37 
Congregational board favors 

cooperation, 200. See Ameri- 
can Board 
Consecrated leaders for train- 
ing schools needed, 180 
Continental missions, 138 
Conversion^ proofs of, 76-79 
Converts, in Roman empire 

and in modern missions, 104 
Copts, an eastern sect, 43, 44 
Cousins, H. T., referred to, 96 
Creeds of native churches, 189, 

190; values in western views, 

195 
Crowther, Bishop, referred to, 

96 
Cust, Robert Needham, quoted, 

on the missionary's only 

duty, 156 

D 

Damrong, Prince, appreciates 

Christian schools, 79 
Dealings of western nations 

with Africa and Asia evil, 68 
Dehli, grandeur of, 9 
Dennis, James S., referred to, 

no, 168 



Denominational showing in 
Christian growth in India, 
116 

Denominationalism, opinions 
on, 196-198 

Dickens, Charles, quoted, 7 

Difficulties, 51 ; ten peculiar to 
converts in non-Christian 
lands, ^ 52-72 

Ding Li Mei, Chinese evan- 
gelist, 151 

"Direct Christian work," 163 

Disciples' board favors co- 
operation, 200 

Discipline by natives, 175 

Donohugh, Thomas S., re- 
fered to, 117 

Double moral standard in 
United States, 56 

Druses, an eastern sect, 43 

Duff, Alexander, 31 

Dunlap, Rev. Eugene P., in 
Siam, y6 f 78, 79 

Duty of the missionary, former 
views of, 154; more recent 
convictions, 156-164 



East Indian peoples, 9 

Eclipse foretold by mission- 
aries, 40 

Ecuador, 121 

Educational work, 30, 47, 110- 
113, 122, 135-137, 179-181 

Efulen, Africa, "Jesus men" in, 
87 

Egypt and Egyptians, 42, 45; 
mission growth, 119 

Eliot, George, quoted, 5 

Ellinwood, Rev. F. F., quoted, 
191 

England when evangelized by 
Augustine, 3 

Epidemics suppressed, 107 

Essay on Prevailing Methods 
of the Evangelisation of the 
Non-Christian World, quoted, 
156 



230 



INDEX 



Eurasian Christians, 116 
Europe, 190, 191. See also 

Continental missions 
European war, 86; a result of 

not accepting Christ's law, 

68 ; effect on missions, 137, 

138 
Evangelistic work, 30, 33, 34, 

36, 45, 103-105, in, 117-121 , 

145-152 m 
Evangelizing as distinct from 

Christianizing, 143 



Faith, call for a larger, 191 
Faunce, W. H. P., no, 168 
Filipinos, 13, 93, 120 
Financial sacrifice, instances 

of, 86 
Fish in Burma and Siam, 15, 

.16, 39 
Fitness for self-government, 

175, 186, 187 
Folk-lore of Karens, 35 
Foreign control undesirable, 

170 
Foreigner disliked and feared, 

70, 71 
Fortitude under persecution, 92 
Foster, Hon. John W., on Li 

Hung Chang, 8 
Fraser, A. G., and social serv- 
ice, 162 
Fraser, Sir A. H. L., quoted, on 

India's lower classes, 10; on 

the Indian Church, 117; on 

native Christians, 80 
Fruits in Siam, 39 
Fruits, spiritual, a test of faith, 

75 



Geddie, John, 104 

Gibson, Rev. J. Campbell, of 
Swatow, quoted, on Chinese 
Church, 114; on Christian 
life in China, 212, 213 

Gilmour, James, 31 



Gifts from Siam's rulers, no 

Giving, 138, 141; character 
shown in, 85 

Gladstone, W. E., quoted, on 
liberty, 173 

God, 5, 21, 27, 29, 36; false or 
inadequate views of, 27, 53, 
54; true revelation of, 27, 
33> 49; working not wholly 
dependent on means, 204-206 

Gorst, quoted on Europe's in- 
tercourse with China, 70 

Gospel of Mark, 83, 148 

Great Britain, denominations 
in, 197 

Greek sectaries at Jerusalem, 

44 
Greene, Rev. Daniel Crosby, 

113,. 152 
Greetings, 215, 216 
Griffin, Z. F., referred to, 96 
Griffis, William E., 39, 95 
Growth in grace, 88, 89 

H 

Habeeb, a Syrian convert, 95 

Hail, Rev. J. B., gives account 
of aged Japanese convert and 
preacher, 149 

Halideh Hanem, of Constanti- 
nople American Girls' Col- 
lege, 13 

Hall, Dr. M. J., 34 

Halsey, Rev. A. W., speaks of 
work in Africa, 77 \ 142 

Hamilton, Angus, quoted, 69, 
70 

Hardy, Arthur S., referred to, 
96 

Harrow School, young Siamese 
at, 12 

Hawaii, 120 

Hayashi, Count, 113 

Hayes, Rev. Watson M., at 
Tsinan, 62 

"Heathen," 2, 6 

"Helpers," 177, 178 

Helping believers in mission 



INDEX 



231 



field as our yotmger brothers, 
213 
Henderson and Watt, quoted, 

3 

Hepburn, Dr. James C, 31, 113 
Hereford, Rev. and Mrs. W. 

F., in Japan, 165 
Heroism required of disciples, 

51 

Higginbottom, Mr. Sam, and 
social service, 162 

Hindu caste, 37 

Hinghwa, Fukien, converts, 76 

History of European Morals, 
quoted, 1 

Holy Sepulcher church, Arme- 
nian procession and unseem- 
ly temper, 44 

Holy Spirit, the, 6, 36, 73, 77, 
78, 89, 95, 106, 173, 175, 181, 
191, 203, 209 

Home Church or churches, 19, 
24 25, 30, 103, 143-146, 171, 
173, 177, 202 

Home life among non-Chris- 
tian peoples, 78 

Honda, Bishop, 95; quoted on 
continued work in Japan, 213 

Hoskins, Rev. F. E., quoted, 47 

"How the Lutherans Look at 
Christian Unity," 201 

Hsi Liang, Viceroy, oration^ of 
at Jackson memorial service, 
106 



Imbrie, Rev. William, of 
Tokyo, quoted, 112 

Imperfections of Christians in 
the mission field, 97 

Independent churches in non- 
Christian lands, 172, 193 

India, Anglican color undesir- 
able in, 196 ; mass ' move- 
ments, 104, 116, 117; mission 
statistics, 116, 124, 214; the 
people, 9, 10; white travelers 
in, 70 



Indolence in tropical countries, 
one cause of, 39, 40 

Influence and strength of mis- 
sion churches, 106 

Institutional funds, question of 
administering, 185, 186 

J 

Jackson, Dr. A. F., 107-109 
Jacobites, an eastern sect, 43, 

44 

Japan Daily Mail, quoted on 
work of Protestant missions, 
106 

Japan, mission statistics, 111- 
113, 124, 213; semi-centennial 
of Protestant missions, 106; 
social work, 157 

Japanese, 8, 38, 39, 54 . 

Japanese criticism of Ameri- 
can Christians, 71 

Japanese pastor in a sorrowing 
home, 149 

Jerusalem, warring sects in, 

43, 44 

Jessup, Rev. Henry H., quoted, 
46, 120, 122; referred to, 95 

Jesus Christ, 4, 29, 39, 44, 71, 
86, # 105, 117, 175, 191; an 
Asiatic, 192; as Savior, 23, 
49, 161 ; manifesting God, 21 ; 
proclaimed, 36, 143, 150; re- 
ceived and witnessed to, 30, 
45, fa 97, 131, 142, 147-152, 
202, 211 ; social and uplifting 
power, 18, 19, 21, 22, 159, 160- 
168 

"Jesus men" in Africa, 87 

Jews offered an opening for 
Paul's work, 27, 143 

Judson, Adoniram, 31 

K 

Kameruns, churches in the, 118, 

129, 141, 142 
Kamil, Moslem convert, 95 
Karens, of Burma, 35, 36, 104 



232 



INDEX 



Kerr, Mr. and Mrs. John G., 
156, 165 

Kiating-fu meetings, 79 

Kidd, Benjamin, quoted, 5, 64 

Kim Chung-sik, early Korean 
Christian, 34, 35 

Kingdom, our Lord's, 104 

Kingsley, Miss Mary, quoted 
on African qualities, 15 

Ko Tha Byu, first Karen con- 
vert, 36 

Korea, adults in Sunday-school, 
82; Angus Hamilton in, 69, 
70; conditions and incidents, 
30-34 ; independent church in, 
172 ^medical missions, 156; 
mission statistics and work 
by natives, no, in, 152; re- 
vivals, 205 

Koreans, 10-12 

Kyoto, "barbarians" warned to 
leave, 39 



Laos martyrs, 41, 42 

Latin America, conditions in, 

66, 121 
Lawrence, Edward A., quoted, 

25 
Lawrence, Lord, quoted, 117 
Leaders, prominent native 

Christian, 96 
Lecky, quoted, 1 
Legend, Siamese, helps the 

gospel, 41 
Leper girl's evangelistic work, 

151 
Lepers, care of and work for, 

107, 157 
Liberty prepares for liberty, 

.173 
Li Hung-chang, diary quoted, 

70; Hon. J. W. Foster's 

opinion of, 8 
Livingstone a pioneer, 31 ; his 

gospel, 163 
"Loaves and fishes" motive to 

be guarded against, 128 



Loyalty a proof of conversion. 
87 

Lutheran Church, favors co- 
operation, 200, 201 

M 

Mackay, Rev. G. L., quoted on 
Negro qualities, 14 

McGilvary, Daniel, 31 

McKean, Dr. James W., of 
Siam, 157 

"Man with the Hoe, The," 
quotation from, 20 

Manchuria, grief for Dr. Jack- 
son, 108, 109 

Markham, Edwin, quoted, 20 

Maronites, an eastern sect, 43 

Marriage in Asia, 57 

Martyn, Henry, 31 ; quoted on 
Brahman conversion, 38 

Martyrs, 41, 42, 93 

Mass movements, 104, in, 116- 
118 

Medical work, 30, 107-109, 155- 
157, }63> 167, 168 

Memoirs of Li Hung Chang, 
quoted on effect of Chris- 
tianity on Japanese, 89-92 

Messianic idea of the Gentiles, 

Methodist Episcopal Board 
(Southern), favors coopera- 
tion, 200 

Methodist Episcopal Church at 
Rangoon, 87 

Methodist Review, article re- 
ferred to, 117 

Mexico, ^ 121 ; independent 
church in, 172 

Mills, Mrs. Annetta L., work 

of, 157, 165 

Mission Problems and Mission 

Methods in South China, 

quoted, 72, 213 
Mission work of mission 

churches, 152 
Missionaries help their fellow 

men, 19 



INDEX 



233 



Missionary work of Paul, 25- 
28 

Modern Missions in the East, 
quoted, 25 

Moffett, Rev. Samuel A., 34, 
152 

Mohammedans, conditions of 
work among, 45-47, 122 

Money, the place of, in mission 
work, 208 

Moody, D. L., quoted, 52 

Morimura Ichizaimon, Chris- 
tian experience of Mr., 150 

Morphine importers converted, 

77 . 
Morrison, Robert, 31 
Moslem lands, 45-47, 122 
Mott, Dr. John R., quoted on 

mission needs, 209 
Municipal government in 

America, 68 

N 
Nan Chai, Lao martyr, 41, 42 
Nan Inta, early Lao convert, 40 
Nationalism in Japan, 38,^ 54 
Nationality affects experience, 

94, 95 
Native Christians and workers, 
employment and compensa- 
tion, 140; high character of 
in India, 80; indispensable 
to mission success, 145, 146; 
question of salaries, 130-134 
Native Church or churches, 24, 
25, 52, 87, 88, 114-117, 123, 
139, 146, 161, 164, 168-203, 
211, 212 
Neesima, Joseph Hardy, 96 
Negro qualities, 14, 15 
Nelson, William S., referred to, 

95 

Nestorians, an eastern sect, 42 

New Acts of the Apostles, The, 
104 

New Forces in Old China, re- 
ferred to, 7 

New Guinea, 120 



New Hebrides, 104, 120 
New standards of life, 58 
New Testament churches and 
those in the mission field, 

211, 212, 215, 2l6 

Niles, Dr. Mary, 157 
Nobel Prize, 9 

Non-Christians, unjust con- 
demnation of, 19 
Nsi Su Ya, Lao martyr, 41, 42 
Nusairiyeh, an eastern sect, 43 

O 

Object of foreign missionary 
work, 23, 24 

Obstacles, encountered, 37, 38; 
to independent churches, 172, 
173 ; to self-support, 127-140 

Occupations in China, 20 

Okuma, Count, address of, 106 ; 
quoted on effect of Chris- 
tian teaching, 113 

Old Wang, Chinese evangelist, 
96 

Oldham, Mr. J. H., quoted, 
68 

Oriental mind, the, and Chris- 
tianity, 28 



Page, J., referred to, 96 
Palestine, 43, 47 
Pantheism, 54 
Pastor Hsi, 96 
Paton, John G., 31, 120 
Patriarch, Armenian, 44 
Patrick in Ireland, 3 
Patriotism as # a cult, 54 
Patton, Francis L., referred to, 

26 
Paul, apostle of the Congo, 96 
Paul, New Testament apostle. 
3, 25-28, 143, 159, 190, 215; a 
Roman citizen, 26 
Pauperizing, danger of, 129 
Permanent dependence of mis- 
sion boards, the only, 208 



234 



INDEX 



Persecution, 40, 93, 152; and 

the New Testament, 81 
Persia and Persians, 31, 42, 45, 

47, 132 '■ 
Personal work at home and 

in the foreign field, 147, 148 
Peru, 121 
Petchaburi hospital, gifts to, 

no 
Pharisees rebuked, 60, 61 
Philanthropic work, 106, 162- 

168 
Philippine Islands, 66, 67, 120 
Piementel, Filipino Christian, 

93 

Pierson, Arthur T., quoted, 

93, 104 
Pingyang, Korea, persecution 

in, 34 
Pingyang- fu, China, Boxer's 

conversion in, 77 
Pioneers in missionary work, 

■31 

Pneumonic plague in China, 
107-109 

Populations of some occupied 
lands and proportion of 
Christians in, 124, 214 

Poverty in China and Korea, 
40 

Prayer and consecration essen- 
tial at home, 208, 209 

Prayer life of converts, 83-85 

Prejudice and social service, 
166 

Presbyterian Board (North- 
ern), 86; favors cooperation, 
198, 199 

Presbyterians (Southern), fa- 
vor cooperation, 200 

Price, Jonathan, pioneer in 
Burma, 31 

Prisoners study the New 
Testament, 81, 82 

Problems, 176, 183, 186 

Progress, comparative, 101-104 

Prolific nature and indolence 
in the tropics, 30 



Protestant work, in Japan, 106 ; 
in Latin America, 121 ; in the 
Philippines, 120 

Puket's Siamese governor ap- 
proves mission work, 79 

Q 

Qualities, of Christians in the 
mission field, 210, 211; re- 
sulting from Christian train- 
ing, 79 

Quelpart, a Korean missionary 
to, 152 

R 

RabindranathTagore, 9 

Race superiority, 5 

Reading, old-time Sunday, 59 

Receipts on the mission field, 
140, 141 

Receptive peoples, 32 

"Relation of Church and Mis- 
sion in Japan, The," referred 
to, 193 

Relationship of the self-gov- 
erning Church a problem, 
183, 186 

Religion as a form, 65, 66 

Religions in India, census of, 
116 

Remensnyder, Rev. Junius B., 
quoted, 200 

Repentance a test, 76-78 

Republicanism struggling in 
China, 194, 195 

Richards, Henry, referred to, 
96 

Rio de Janeiro, 121 

Roll of honor, native Chris- 
tian, 95, 96 

Roman Catholic Church, 66, 
116, 206 

Roman empire, converts in, 104 

Roosevelt, Theodore, referred 
to, 26 

Ross, E. A., quoted, 20, 21 

Ross, Rev. John, referred to, 
96, 148 

Ruskin, John, quoted, 6 



INDEX 



225 



Sabbath observance, 59 
Salaries of native workers, 134, 

135 

Salvation Army work, 157 

Sato and his son visit Li Hung 
Chang, 89-92 

Sau Kyung-jo, 149 

Scales of living differ, 128 

Scotch Presbyterian Mission, 
107 

Scotland of To-day, quoted, 3 

Scottish peasant's life, 4 

Self-government for rising 
Churches, the native side, 170 

Self-propagation a duty, 143 ; a 
necessity, 144 

Self-support a fundamental 
need, 127, 129, 131, 137; en- 
couraging facts, 151, 152; ex- 
amples, 140; list of books on, 
141 

Seoul, 34 35; prayer-meeting 
in, 84 

Seward, Hon. George _ F., 
quoted on opening of Siam, 
109 

Shakespeare, quoted, 6 

Shanghai, conditions in, 19; 
social work in, 157 

Shidiak, Asaad, Syrian martyr, 

9.3 

Shintoism, 27 

Siam, church acts in a gam- 
bling ^ case, 174; mission 
statistics, 119; schools re- 
ceive gifts, no; social work 
in, 109; white travelers in, 

7° 

Siamese, 12; causes of indo- 
lence, 39; legend helps the 
gospel, 41 ; village converts, 
751 well-to-do people, 40 

Sins of cities the same, 19 

Social _ Aspects of Foreign 
Missions, 168 

Social Christianity in the 
Orient, 168 



Social Evolution, quoted, 64 
Social service, apostolic, 160; 
in Christ's preaching, 167, 
168; necessity for, 155 
Social or philanthropic work in 
foreign lands, 155-168, 184, 
185; statistics, 163, 164. See 
also Philanthropic work 
Sociological Progress in Mis- 
sion Lands, 168 
Sorai, Korea, model village, 148 
South America, 121 
South Sea Islands, 31, 120 
Sovereignty of the people, 192 
Stanley, Henry M., 118 
Starting the Church, 24, 25 
Statistics, meaning of, 99, 123 ; 
philanthropic and social 
work, 163, 164; self-support, 
140, 141 ; some populations, 
124, 214; world mission 
totals, 100. See also separate 
fields, as Africa, Latin 
America 
Students in America from non- 
Christian lands, 135, 137 
Sunday-schools, 82, 121 
Sunday service at Iloilo, 88 
Sunday, the old-time New Eng- 
land, 59 
Superstition, 53-56 
Syria, and Syrians, 42, 47 
Syriacs, an eastern sect, 43, 44 



Taj Mahal, the, 9 

Taylor, Mrs. H., referred to, 

Telugu mission, 104 
Temptations or testings, 51-72 
Test^ endurance under perse- 
cution a, 92 
Teutons in Caesar's time, 3 
Thoburn, Bishop James M., in 

India, 116; quoted, 87 
Times, The, London, quoted 
on missionary statistics, 115 



236 



INDEX 



Tiyo Soga, of South Africa, 
96 

Training of native leaders, 179, 
180 

Transformed lives, 79 

Travels in West Africa, 15 

Tripoli, Syria, 46 

Truthfulness, 58 

Turkey, 43, 45, 63, 132 

Turkish "capitulations,'* 63 

Turks, 12, 13 

Two views of missions, 106 

Tyler, Josiah, pioneer in South 
Africa, 31 

Types, national, 195; of con- 
verts, 210; of experience, 94 

Typical, non-Christian house, 
78; peoples, 7-16 



U 
Uemura, Mr., of Tokyo, quoted 
on self-reliance of Japanese 
Christianity, 175 
Uganda, Africa, 104, 118 
Un Ho, leper girl, 151 
Unchristian conduct, 68-71 
Underwood, Horace G., 34 
Unfinished task, the, 123, 124 
Union and cooperation recom- 
mended, 198-202 
United Free Church Magazine, 

referred to, 96 
United States, 24, 5^ 66, 71, 

144; denominations in, 197 
Unity and Missions, 202 



Vaccination, 107 

Venezuela, 121 

Verbeck, Rev. Guido F., re- 
ferred to, 31, 113 

"Vestiges of Heathenism with- 
in the Church in the Mission 
Field," referred to, 56 

Vices non-Christian world, 18 

Vitality, test of, 146 



W 
Wages in Asia of the common 

people, 140, 186 
War, effect on missions of the 
present. See European war 
Warneck, Professor Joh., re- 
ferred to, 56 
Water of life, the, 47-49 
Watson, Dr. Charles R., de- 
scribes Halideh Hanem, 13; 
on spiritual life in the 
Egyptian Church, 88 
Wealth, the missionary's com- 
parative, 128 
West Africa Mission in the 

KamerunSj 118 ~ 
White man in Asia, The, 27 
Whittier, John G., quoted, 22 
Why and How of Foreign 

Missions, The, 145 
Witnesses, 149, 150, 211 
Wives among non-Christian 

peoples, 77, 78 
Wolff, Rev. Joseph, in Tripoli, 

Syria, 46 
Woman, inferiority a funda- 
mental view in non-Christian 
lands, 55, 59 ; position changed 
by Christianity, 78 
Womanhood transfigured, 17 
Worcester, Dean C, quoted on 

Filipino people, 13 
Work, varied forms of, 30 
Working church, the best, 87 
World Missionary Conference, 
in Edinburgh, referred to, 
209 
Wretchedness appalling in 
non-Christian lands, 19, 20 



Yokohama, early Protestantism 
in, 38 

Yuan Shih-kai, and Confu- 
cianism, 62; qualifications of, 
8; receives deputation, 115; 
referred to, 194 



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prise. By Arthur J. Brown. 

12. The Moslem World. A study of the Mohammedan 
world. By Samuel M. Zwemer. 

13. The Frontier. A study of the New West. By Ward 
Piatt. 

14. South America: Its Missionary Problems. A study of 
South America. By Thomas B. Neely. 

15. The Upward Path : The Evolution of a Race. A study 
of the Negro. By Mary Helm. 

16. Korea in Transition. A study of Korea. By James S. 
Gale. 

17. Advance in the Antilles. A study of Cuba and Porto 
Rico. By Howard B. Grose. 

18. The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. A study 
of conditions throughout the non-Christian world. By John R. 
Mott. 

19. India Awakening. A study of present conditions in 
India. By Sherwood Eddy. 

20. The Church of the Open Country. A study of the 
problem of the Rural Church. By Warren H. Wilson. 

21. The Call of the World. A survey of conditions at home 
and abroad of challenging interest to men. By W. E. Doughty. 

22. The Emergency in China. A study of present-day con- 
ditions in China. By F. L. Hawks Pott. 

23. Mexico To-day: Social, Political, and Religious Con- 
ditions. A study of present-day conditions in Mexico. By 
George B. Winton. 



24. Immigrant Forces. A study of the immigrant in his 
home and American environment. By William P. Shriver. 

25. The New Era in Asia. Contrast af early and present 
conditions in the Orient. By Sherwood Eddy. 

26. The Social Aspects of Foreign ^ Missions. A study of 
the social achievements of foreign missions. By W. H. P. 
Faunce. 

2j. The New Home Missions. A study of the social achieve- 
ments and social program of home missions. By H. Paul 
Douglass. 

28. The American Indian on the New Trail. A story of 
the Red Men of the United States and the Christian gospel. By 
Thomas C. Moffett. 

29. The Individual and the Social Gospel. A study of the 
individual in the local church and his relation to the social mes- 
sage of the gospel. By Shailer Mathews. 

30. Rising Churches in Non-Christian Lands. A study of 
the native Church and its development in the foreign mission 
field. By Arthur J. Brown. 

31. The Churches at Work.^ A statement of the work of the 
churches in the local community in the United States. By 
Charles L. White. 

32. Efficiency Points. The Bible, Service, Giving, Prayer, 
— four conditions of efficiency. By W. E. Doughty. 

In addition to the above courses, the following have been pub- 
lished especially for use among younger persons: 

1. Uganda's White Man of Work. The story of Alexander 
M. Mackay of Africa. By Sophia Lyon Fahs. 

2. Servants of the King. A series of eleven sketches of 
famous home and foreign missionaries. By Robert E. Speer. 

3. Under Marching Orders. The story of Mary Porter 
Gamewell of China. By Ethel Daniels Hubbard. 

4. Winning the Oregon Country. The story of Marcus 
Whitman and Jason Lee in the Oregon country. By John T. 
Faris. 

5. The Black Bearded Barbarian. The story of George 
Leslie Mackay of Formosa. By Marian Keith. 

6. Livingstone the Pathfinder. The story of David Living- 
stone. By Basil Mathews. 

7. Ann of Ava. The story of Ann Hasseltine Judson of 
Burma. By Ethel Daniels Hubbard. 

8. Comrades in Service. Eleven brief biographies of Chris- 
tian workers. By Margaret E. Burton. 

These books are published 03' mutual arrangement among the 
home and foreign mission boards, to whom all orders should be 
addressed. They are bound uniformly and are sold at 60 cents 
in cloth, and 40 cents in paper; prepaid. Nos. 21, 29, and 32 
are 25 cents in cloth, prepaid. 



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EVERYLAND is issued quarterly, sixty- 
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